From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Jan 3 1:34:21 2001 From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 3 01:34:18 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk [193.237.89.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EF6CA37B400 for ; Wed, 3 Jan 2001 01:34:16 -0800 (PST) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.11.0/8.11.0) id f039XWN04045; Wed, 3 Jan 2001 09:33:32 GMT (envelope-from nik) Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 09:33:32 +0000 From: Nik Clayton 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> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Organization: FreeBSD Project Sender: nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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 -- Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95. Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless. Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard. -- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message