Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 20:24:08 -0700 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: If Brett only knew... Message-ID: <4.1.19990225201741.04032520@mail.lariat.org> In-Reply-To: <199902260157.SAA11483@usr06.primenet.com> References: <4.1.19990225164531.0401b440@mail.lariat.org>
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At 01:57 AM 2/26/99 +0000, Terry Lambert wrote: >> Well, now I know. All I can say is that this shows the "greed" >> of the very people who claim that commercial software developers >> are greedy. > >No it doesn't, not if you jump in and stop them. > >Besides which, their ability to do this is predicated on the license >that we chose intentionally to allow people to do this. Well, there's actually some question about whether the license DOES allow them to do this. There are two clauses in the GPL that are problematic. First, the GPL says: "This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License." None of the files in FreeBSD has such a notice. Thus, the GPL cannot be used unless the author is willing to place a notice in the code saying that he or she agrees to release it under the GPL. Second, the GPL is incompatible with the advertising clause that's on many BSD files. Finally, the names "FreeBSD" and "BSD" are trademarks. You can bet that BSDI would (justifiably) object to the use of "BSD" on GPLed code, since (a) it would be misleading and (b) they wouldn't be able to merge the changes into their own code base. Second, the FreeBSD Project should not let them use the FreeBSD mark on code that's been GPLed. It should insist that changes to the FreeBSD kernel be released under a BSD license if the mark is to be used. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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