BSD-4-Clause is the original BSD licence, and it carries the advertising clause that later versions removed: any advertising material mentioning features of the software must acknowledge the original authors. It is rare, it is worth noticing when it appears, and it is the reason the three-clause version exists.
Filed under the SPDX identifier GitHub reports for the repository,
not under what the README claims. NOASSERTION means a licence file
exists that GitHub could not match to an SPDX identifier — read it
before you depend on it.
Why ACTIVE: pushed_at = 2026-07-02 — 43 days, within the 90-day ACTIVE threshold.
Field
Value at this printing
pushed_at
2026-07-02
archived
false
latest_release
v1.15.1 · 2026-07-02
license.spdx_id
BSD-4-Clause
stargazers_count
1800
http_status
200
fetched_at
2026-08-14T09:12:00Z
rubric_edition
2nd, in force
Endpoint: GET https://api.github.com/repos/bogdanfinn/tls-client
unauthenticated · 60 req/hr
A live read does not change what is printed above it. The site records that you ran it; what GitHub returned is not kept. The printed state moves only when the register is swept and a new printing is issued. raw JSON
The clause requires an acknowledgement in advertising materials naming the copyright holder. When many differently-attributed BSD-licensed components are combined, the acknowledgements accumulate — the famous complaint being a system that would have needed dozens of separate credit lines. Berkeley itself rescinded the clause for its own code in 1999, and the three-clause version became the norm.
It also creates a practical incompatibility with GPL-licensed code in the view of the Free Software Foundation, which is the other reason it is worth flagging rather than passing over.
What to do when you find it here
Read the licence file itself rather than the identifier, note who has to be acknowledged, and decide whether your distribution model has anything the clause would attach to. For internal use it changes nothing; for a marketed product it is a real obligation.
This register reads the identifier from the repository's own licence metadata at the field check, not from a README badge, and prints it exactly as the API returned it.
Questions about the BSD-4-Clause entries
Licence questions, answered from the field this register reads and from the licence texts themselves. Nothing here is legal advice.
What is the BSD advertising clause?
A term in the original four-clause BSD licence requiring that advertising materials mentioning the software's features acknowledge its original authors. It was rescinded by Berkeley for its own code and removed in the three-clause version, but it survives in projects that adopted the older text.
Is BSD-4-Clause compatible with the GPL?
The Free Software Foundation regards the advertising clause as incompatible with the GPL. This register reports the identifier the repository declares and does not adjudicate compatibility; where it matters to you, read both licence texts.
Why does this registry separate BSD-4-Clause from BSD-3-Clause?
Because they are different SPDX identifiers with a materially different obligation, and collapsing them would hide the one clause anybody needs to know about. Filing by declared identifier rather than by family is the point.
Every row above was chosen by somebody who then had to establish two
separate things — whether the code was alive, and whether it was theirs
to use. Donut Browser answers the second in its own repository: an
open-source anti-detect browser under AGPL-3.0, with the desktop
application and the sync server both in that repository, engine-level
fingerprint spoofing through the Wayfern Chromium fork rather than
injected JavaScript, a local REST API and MCP server on your own
machine, zero telemetry, and a pre-launch gate that refuses to start a
profile when the proxy's exit geography contradicts the profile's
fingerprint. Its own licence row is in
this same catalogue, read at the same
field check as everything else.