Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 14:48:45 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Dennis Jun <dennisjun@home.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD licence vs GPL Message-ID: <3A982C3D.ED8E7FC3@softweyr.com> References: <046d01c09bd0$1e8bdfc0$0300a8c0@wilma>
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Dennis Jun wrote: > > Hello all! > > A Linux friend of mine and I were chatting bout the BSD licence versus the > GPL. He was asking me how *BSD developers felt about that their code could > (and has) being used by commercial companies and in turn becomes closed in > the end. That is, you don't know if your code will stay open or not. He > asked doesn't that bother BSD developers? I thought this was a very > interesting question. I couldn't give him a really good answer since I'm > not a programmer. So I wanted to ask some people who do program and > contribute to BSD what their thoughts on this is. Does it bother you? Is > it even an issue? Much thanx in advance. Sorry to reply so late, I had a connectivity interruption Wednesday. Let's look at this the other way around: "Gee, I just hate it when my ISP's routers get that bug fix I wrote last week." I think there are a lot of programs that are very suitable for the GPL. The GIMP, GCC/GDB/binutils, and most other tools programs are not harmed in any way by the GPL. Infrastructure elements like operating systems, libraries, and server programs may be, if it discourages vendors from using the code. My strongest complaint w.r.t. the GPL is that there are much better licenses that actually provide the protection the GPL seeks, without the political rhetoric and ambiguity of the GPL. Two that come immediately to mind are the IBM Public License and the Cygnus (now Root Hack, I guess) eCOS License. http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/license10.html http://www.redhat.com/embedded/technologies/ecos/ecoslicense.html The eCOS license requires modifications to eCOS itself to be contributed back or made publically available, while the IBM license does not. Both clearly state, in legal terminology, that you are allowed to make and distribute binary products that use the original software without requiring your proprietary code to be covered by the license. Both also accomplish the goal of making sure the covered software is usable in commercial products, so that even Joe Sixpack can benefit from it. RMS *thinks* he is building software for the masses, but which do you think has a larger installed base, Emacs or the code in cable tv set-top boxes? GCC or the Ford or GM engine-management code? Linux or the code running in Casio watches? -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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