Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 09:33:32 +0000 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: bret@lextext.com Subject: Important error in re BSD license in http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/01/legal/ Message-ID: <20010103093332.A1410@canyon.nothing-going-on.org>
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Bret,
[ I'm bcc:'ing the FreeBSD advocacy mailing list for information ]
I've just finished reading your interesting article at
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/01/legal/
About half way through you say:
But GNU is by no means the only development effort that
asks its members to do this. Development for BSD, Linux,
Apache, and Mozilla, to name a prominent few, all have
their own unique restrictions, though each would properly
call itself an open-source development effort. And each
requires that its license be passed forward onto any future
improvements or developments incorporating work
published under its license.
Your last sentance is emphatically *not* true for the BSD and Apache licenses.
The original BSD license can be seen at
http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/license.html
As you can see, there are four points that must be followed. None of
those points say anything about "Alterations to this code must be
published under the same license".
The license that the majority of FreeBSD is published under can be seen
at
http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html
As you can see, we've dropped the last two clauses from the original four
clause BSD license.
Third parties are free to take code from FreeBSD (and Net/OpenBSD) and
use it in their own products. They are free to alter the code, and keep
those alterations proprietry, with no requirement to donate their
changes back. For example, Juniper networks did just that with JUNOS,
the operating system in their range of routers. See
http://www.juniper.net/techcenter/techpapers/200003-01.html
for more information.
Apache is distributed under a license that is similar to the original
BSD license, but with an additional clause; it can be seen at
http://www.apache.org/LICENSE.txt
Again, there is no requirement for anyone making changes to the Apache
code to make their changes open.
This requirement to publish changes (in the case of the GPL) or not (in
the case of the BSD and similar licenses) is the main cause of friction
between to the two camps.
Hope that's helpful.
N
--
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