bsd vs gpl

Wojciech Puchar wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl
Wed Mar 11 05:12:45 PDT 2009


> i've not paid much attention to licensing philosophy i the past,
> because for me it was always windoze vs the goodguys.
>
> however, recently i've become aware of there being a chasm within the
> goodguys in that the bsd attitude is do what you want as long as you
> give credit to the creator, whereas the gpl folks say do what you want
> as long as you keep it free.
>
> is this a fair summation?
not quite.

"keep it free" means that you HAVE TO publish sources of your whole 
product if you will just use a few lines of code from GPL sources.

It's not free licence, it's just another kind communism.

In contrary BSD licence allows you to JUST USE THE CODE. That's all.

Nothing forbids you to write say "prad-OS" that will reuse all drivers 
from FreeBSD, and sell it commercially in binary only form.


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