What is the philosophy of FreeBSD about the licenses?

[Michael Sierchio]

On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 10:36 AM, françai s <romapera15 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The following link explains the philosophy of OpenBSD and explains why the
> GPL is unacceptable according to this philosophy  :
> http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html
>
> What is the philosophy of FreeBSD about the licenses?

Let the License Flame War begin! ;-)

I agree that GPL is unacceptable, and my lawyers do, too. Since I am
no longer a hobbyist but work for a company that makes software and
sells services, GPL is toxic. My view is that Stallman is an
intellectual fascist, but he's a MacArthur Grant recipient and I am
not.

Because FreeBSD arose out of the flames of a different license war
(also a patent and trademark war), when BSD was extricated from AT&T,
encumbering licenses are not favored. The two clause BSD license is

 Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
 modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
 are met:

 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

Usually accompanied by a disclaimer and copyright claim.

That license itself is the embodiment of the philosophy.

- M