From ZDNet: A Danish developer of the popular FreeBSD operating system, who was seeking sponsorship to support him while he works on the filesystem and disk-I/O subsystem, says he has been successful in his search (OSNews was among the first to post about it). Donations came in from firms as far afield as Siberia. The funding is significant for those who develop and use FreeBSD because it illustrates that the users are willing to support full-time development at least of parts of the OS.
Siberian coal mine digs out FreeBSD funding
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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A lot of people use FreeBSD and make lots of money with it. It’s only fair that the people that put their time into it get compensated appropriately. Yahoo, for instance, who relies heavily on FreeBSD, should be one of the first to give.
> FreeBSD is available for no charge under the General Public License [from the linked article]
ZDNet writer must be clueless. How laughable. They indeed linked to http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/ , but failed to discover FreeBSD is licensed under BSD license, not GPL.
Wow, I think he would get stabbed af a FUG meeting for saying such a thing. It would then turn into a knife fight with those FUG members who love the GPL over BSD vs. GPL. At which point the Mac users would leave for their MUG meeting.
So what is the major differences between these two license? Which is the one that gives the most free unrestricted access?
GJ
The BSD license allows you to do almost anything with the code, while the GPL a copyleft license requires you to release any modifications to the code under the GPL.
GPL softwre must stay GPL, that is to say free as in speech. BSD software states more or less, that you can do whatever the heck you want with the code, as is take it and put in your comercial product if you so desire. The point seems to be to get the best code in as much as possible without worrying about restrictions. I once heard that early versions of windows 95/98 used a BSD licences IP (internet protocol) stack, particularily from FreeBSD if I remember right, but I might be off on that.
So what is the major differences between these two license? Which is the one that gives the most free unrestricted access?
The BSDL has fewer restrictions. Take that to mean what you will.
You can take BSD licensed code and release it as GPL. That’s how free the BSD license is. So technically there probably IS a GPLed FreeBSD out there.
Then what is this for?
http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/COPYING
FreeBSD contains userland components that are GPL’d. However, the kernel itself and the bulk of the userland are BSD licensed.
BSD license is more free because you can almost do anything you want with it.
GPL is more free because you are guaranteed the code will stay free.
Which one is more important and look more free is up to you. I personally prefer the BSD license.
<blockquote> You can take BSD licensed code and release it as GPL. That’s how free the BSD license is. So technically there probably IS a GPLed FreeBSD out there. </blockquote>
Grrrrr this misconception annoys me. No you cannot simply remove a BSDL and plonk a GPL on it. Basic copyright law prohibits that and the BSD license states that the copyright license must be retained whether it is redistributed as binary or source.
Great inititive, I gave him money as well, I think it’s nice to show that the Open Source world is more than just mindless leeching – phk is a excellent coder and a all round great guy, and he deserves credit for this stunt, it was great pr for FreeBSD and we now have a fulltime employee working supported by the users.
Go PHK.
No you cannot simply remove a BSDL and plonk a GPL on it.
True. Removal of copyright notices and license conditions constitute copyright infringement.
However, it is fairly easy to superimpose the GPL as an additional license restriction on top of the BSD license. The BSD licensed code stays BSD licensed but every additional added code has to adhere to the GPL, thus making the source as a whole act as a GPL-ed source.
The devil is in the details. The BSD code in the Linux kernel for example is still BSDL, but I would not recommend rip it out for use under a BSD licence lest you inadvertently rip some GPLed lines with it, that could plunge you head first into a licensing wrangle.
I personally have no problems with the provisions of the GPL, allthough I think it’s unfortunate that the sharing between BSDL and GPL is one way only. It would be nice if it could be a mutual benefit.
IANAL but I think with a BSD license you can do whatever you want with derivate works. So you couldn’t GPL the BSD code but if you developed on it you could GPL that. The BSD code as is remains BSD.
Quit harping about the license. This article isn’t about licensing. So stop talking about it.
I once heard that early versions of windows 95/98 used a BSD licences IP (internet protocol) stack, particularily from FreeBSD if I remember right, but I might be off on that.
No, that was the telnet program (among others) of Windows NT 4.0. Of course they had to leave the copyright notice in it, so when people dicovered it and talked about that everywhere, MICROS~1 had to show they can do it better, threw in their own telnet program with SP 1, and then started the remote exploit problems.
Where does it say you can superimpose a GPL on it? Adding any other license without the author(s) permission would simply be illegal. I think what Stallman means when he talks about redistrbuting open source code with GPLed code as a package is that it should be distributed (ie. tarred and sent out into the world) under the terms of the GPL, not that the license on individual files should be wholesalely stipped off or another one added. By the logic that you can superimpose the GPL on a BSDL, you could also do the same to any closed source software, which plainly you can’t. You need the permission of the author (or the licence itself) to change (or add) a license.
……
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
<disclaimer omitted>
“The BSD license allows you to do almost anything with the code, while the GPL a copyleft license requires you to release any modifications to the code under the GPL.”
thats incorrect. you need to only agree to give out the code at a nominal cost if you distribute the binaries to a third party. distributing it within offices of the same company or keeping the modifications private is possible.
“distributing it within offices of the same company or keeping the modifications private is possible.”
To clarify: the person meant with “it”: “source developed inhouse” and this is indeed correct as long as there aren’t any binaries based on the “source developed inhouse” distributed.
So NSA didn’t had to release SELinux because of the GPL if they only ran the binaries based on their inhouse source at their own organisation.