BSD legal question

Joel rees at ddcom.co.jp
Fri May 20 02:39:53 PDT 2005


[...]
> > NOT(FSF=GPL)
> >
> 
> NOT(NOT(FSF=GPL))
> 
> Politically, the two are the same - the FSF owns copyright on the GPL
> itself,
> they can change it anytime they want - thus the GPL says what the FSF
> wants
> it to say.

Then why is the copyright on the current version 1991 (or was it 1992)?
That's a long time without changes.

> Legally, no, but that doesen't count
> when the press is interviewing Eric Raymond for the bazillonth time.  And
> it is those interviews that do the damage, not the legalities.

Well, that explains a lot.

You know, you don't have to jump either left or right when they say jump
left. You can specify, for instance, v. 2.0 of the license, and it never
changes until you specify something else, as long as you don't give them
the copyright. Or you can specify a compatible license. Or you can
specify an incompatible license. 

You choose a license that fits your business model. 

(And I'm not sure what the relevance of them not paying your legal bills
might be. If you don't give them the copyright, why should you expect
any favors from them just because you might decide to use a license
model they've provided for free?)

[snipping a bunch of stuff I don't agree with but don't want to spend
time arguing about]

> > If the license of the part is compatible, it remains in force on the
> > part as an independent work.
> >
> 
> But, their definition of compatible is so narrow only the GPL fits it.

Then why do they have that page full of supposedly free or open licenses
that says more than twenty licenses are both free _and_ compatible with
the GPL, including the non-advertising version of the BSD?

[snipping more stuff]

> > Thanks for the warning. Now I know one of the things I'll need
> > to be very
> > careful about if I sell FreeBSD workstations with ports pre-installed.
> >
> 
> Exactly, you should never do this.  You should sell workstation hardware
> then have the customer contract with you to build the software on them.
> It needs to be a separate contract and all of that.  That is exactly what
> we do when we deal with these sorts of things.

Interesting that we come to the same conclusion here. 

Maybe that should be in a FAQ somewhere. Is it?

--
Joel Rees   <rees at ddcom.co.jp>
digitcom, inc.   株式会社デジコム
Kobe, Japan   +81-78-672-8800
** <http://www.ddcom.co.jp> **



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