From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri May 18 18:30:32 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 422B237B42C for ; Fri, 18 May 2001 18:30:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id CC7186ACBC; Sat, 19 May 2001 10:57:46 +0930 (CST) Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 10:57:46 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: Seth Kramer Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.org Subject: What is GPL and open source? (was: Perens' "Free Software Leaders Stand Together") Message-ID: <20010519105746.F7513@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <000001c0dfb7$949e85c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <002501c0e000$57523100$0100000a@home.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <002501c0e000$57523100$0100000a@home.org>; from sdkramer@tristate.edu on Fri, May 18, 2001 at 08:09:21PM -0500 Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Friday, 18 May 2001 at 20:09:21 -0500, Seth Kramer wrote: > Humor a newbie. What exactly is the difference between GPL and Open > Source? Further how is the licensing for BSD different from Linux > distros, or BSD different from Linux for that matter? *sigh* This looks like being a long thread. Let's see if I can put the terms into perspective. 1. Free Software is the term Richard Stallman uses for any software which is freely redistributable without fees payable to the author. 2. The GNU General Public License is a license which enforces freedom of software. A program licensed under the GPL must remain free; you can't incorporate it in something else and sell it unless you make the source code available. 3. The BSD license is a free software license which does not enforce freedom of software in the same way as the GPL. A program licensed under the BSD license may be incorporated in something else and sold. It's freer than the GPL, but it's also less attractive to big companies currently releasing their code as source, since they're worried about their competitors getting hold of their technology and incorporating it in their own for-sale products. 4. Open Source is a term Eric Raymond uses to make free software palatable to commercial entities who might look at "free software" and decide it's worth what you pay for it. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message