BSD legal question

Joel rees at ddcom.co.jp
Fri May 20 04:36:20 PDT 2005


> > > 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.

Well, of course you don't choose the license on the software you get. At
least, not unless the author says you can.

Since copyright exists, and the only way to have more rights than fair
use is if the author expressly gives you those rights, I don't see the
purpose in complaining if the author gives you more than fair use.

> 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.

Some people believe in free love. Some people believe you can't have
love without a contract. Both points of view, and many others, are
correct, although not in all contexts, and not necessarily to the
extreme degrees that are sometimes claimed.

If you have too many degrees of freedom, you can't move, because there's
nothing to put your feet on. Contracts give you something to plant your
feet on.

Some people can see the social contracts without having to be hit over
the head with them. I think such people are comfortable with the BSD,
MIT, and similar licenses. 

Some people need to have more explicit boundaries, and certainly the GPL
is more free than Microsoft's EULAs.

[more snipping]

> 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.

I'll have to go looking, I suppose. I know it's hard to get your hands
on actual code any more. Care to name some specific examples?

> 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.

Okay, there's one to look for, I guess?

> I assume somewhere there are reasonable people who have logical
> reasoned arguments that they personally prefer the GPL over the
> BSD license. 

I think I'm reasonable, although, if you read some of my not-quite-free
licenses, you might wonder. I do use an MIT-style license at times. But
if I ever finish a certain product, I don't want Microsoft embracing and
extending the code for that, so I'm likely to use a dual license on that,
with the GPL as one alternative and something anti-Microsoft as the
other.

Maybe I'm not reasonable?

;-/

[more snipping]


--
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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