Subject: RE: [hackers-il] bsd license?

From: Tal Rotbart <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:09:36 +0200

Also remember that the original BSD license was created before Richard
Stallman came up with the GPL concept and the free-software philosophy...

-----Original Message-----
From: Oleg Goldshmidt [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 5:43 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [hackers-il] bsd license?

"Tzahi Fadida" <[email-masked]> writes:

> Sounds odd. I always had the feeling that there should be an added 
> benefit to a license of an open project, i.e: what would it help if 
> people can use the code for development without relinquishing the code 
> to the public?

Depends on your point of view, I guess. 

From the point of view of the public, it is "less" than GPL (in the sense
that the public gets the derivative work less some of the code).

From the point of view of a developer who, similarly to one of the recent
posters, wants to protect his IP (though maybe not to that drastic extent),
it is "more" (in the sense that he can do more with your BSD-licensed code).

From the point of view of the creator who faces the choice of license for
his work, with the BSD license he may gain a larger and deeper pool of
potential users, if he believes that the number of users turned off by GPL
is larger than the number of people who will suffer from the lack of full
sources, or if he is concerned that GPL takes away the freedom to use his
creation in certain ways from his clients. It *is* a choice, and one may
make the choice based on pragmatic considerations, or igeological ones, or
both (those are not necessarily in contradiction).

Also see, e.g., the MIT license, and others at

http://opensource.org/licenses/

and

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | [email-masked]

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---

From: "Tzahi Fadida" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:28:17 +0200

that explains it. But i think you are right, if the socket was not under bsd,
who knows how the internet would look like. probably the same, but it would have
taken longer.
Another question, if you incorporate the code into your own code(no interface),
should it also be released under bsd and closed sourced. Because if its closed,
what do you care if its bsd. also, the copyrights can't be seen which seems
worse.

> From: Tal Rotbart [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 6:10 PM
> To: [email-masked]'
> Subject: RE: [hackers-il] bsd license?
>
>

---

From: Tzafrir Cohen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 19:49:31 +0200

> who knows how the internet would look like. probably the same, but it would have

The API itself has no license restrictions. A certain implementation of
it that is also used in many other operating systems is derived from BSD 
code that is licensed with the BSD license.

If such a code wouldn't have existed maybe other implementations would
have come along.

The famous counter example: X11 was licensed with the MIT license, that
has basically the same conditions (sans the annoying advertising
clause). It was effectively "hijacted" by proprietary implementations.
When people were looking for free implementations of this in the
beginning of the nighties, they couldn't find. The rest is XFree's
history.

> what do you care if its bsd. also, the copyrights can't be seen which seems

If I derive my code from a BSD code, I basically have two obligations:

1. (advirtizing clause) : mention in a very good spot in the
messages/packaging/whatever that BSD code was used

2. In my copyright statement mention that portions of my code are from
BSD code.

That's it. There is no "copyleft" like in the GPL: I don't need to make
it BSD as well.

The advertizing caluse was removed in a lter version of that license,
againt which license-pedantic people like RMS and Theo de-Rhadt (spelling?)
strongly advocate.

(openssl is licensed with the original bsd license, that is not GPL
compatible due to the advertizing clause. GPL programs cannot use it)

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen                       +---------------------------+
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/ |vim is a mutt's best friend|
mailto:[email-masked]       +---------------------------+