BSD legal question

Ted Mittelstaedt tedm at toybox.placo.com
Fri May 20 03:02:55 PDT 2005



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Joel
> Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 2:40 AM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: BSD legal question
>
>
> > 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.
>

I am not choosing the licenses on the open source software I get.
And although I honestly don't care one way or another about the
GPL itself, I detest lying.  And most GPL proponents engage in it
vociferoiusly starting with their claim that the GPL is more "free"
than the BSD license.  That is a goddam lie if there ever was one.

> > 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?
>

What the FSF means by compatible is those are the licenses that give
up the copyright holders authority to determine distribution on the
software, so anyone can come along and apply the more restrictive GPL
distribution licensing on the software.

> [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?
>

If it was the GPL bigots would scream about it.  They hate
the BSD license with a passion and GPL BSD code every chance they
get.  Just look at the Linux distros.  There's absolutely no reason
to apply the GPL license to the BSD utilities that are in those
distros but you check the source code and you will see it there.
And if you know nothing about Ghostscript and GNU Ghostscript/Alladin
Ghostscript, you ought to read up on the dispute, it is a textbook
example of rabid GPL bigotry being so rabid that they bit off their
own nose.

I assume somewhere there are reasonable people who have logical
reasoned arguments that they personally prefer the GPL over the
BSD license.  But I've never read anything any of those people
have written on the global scene.  I suppose it's like the Baptist
Church, you know the majority of them are normal people, but
none of those are in control of the organization.

Ted



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