Slashdot Mirror
Open-source Licensing: BSD or GPL?
BSDForums.org writes "Mark Brewer of Covalent Technologies argues BSD is better for the enterprise. As open source licensing models, both the Berkeley Software Distribution license and the General Public License have advantages and disadvantages. But in the end, the BSD offers more benefits to enterprise customers. Matt Asay of Novell makes the case for GPL. He says, no one open source license is ideal in every circumstance. Different licenses serve different ends. Berkeley Software Distribution-style licenses have been used to govern the development of exceptional open source projects such as Apache. Clearly, BSD has its strengths. However, all things being equal, he prefers the General Public License (GPL ). The GPL is one of the most exciting, innovative capitalist tools ever created. The GPL breaks down walls between vendors and customers while enabling strong competitive differentiation.
Which is a better licensing model for open-source applications: BSD or GPL? What do you think?"
The GPL is one of the most exciting, innovative capitalist tools ever created. The GPL breaks down walls between vendors and customers while enabling strong competitive differentiation.
;-)
Buzz word overload! Take cover! Buzzword overload! Take cover! Buzz...
* Robot's head EXPLODES in a shower of sparks!
Would it kill people to speak in normal sentences instead of Market Speak(TM)? This entire article is just silly. Of course businesses prefer the BSD license. It places fewer restrictions on them, and allows them true ownership of derivitive works. That gives them something to later sell or use as a barganing chip.
Of course many OSS authors prefer the GPL. It forces companies and other users to help pay for development by giving back. The benefit to OSS authors is very clear. The benefit to businesses, however, is still questionable in many circumstances.
In the end it comes down to the usefulness of the software. If a business can't build upon BSD licensed software, they'll go with GPLed software. But if they can help it, they'll just go for the public domain stuff.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Because this has never been covered on slashdot before. Ever.
HJ
The GPL license is perfect for developers.
The BSD license is perfect for everybody else.
The GNU General Public License, the African General Public License, or the European General Public License?
I swear to god my jaw dropped when I read the article summary, at first I was excited by the idea of some differing views being presented on the different license models, but then I hit the last line
"Which is a better licensing model for open-source applications: BSD or GPL? What do you think?"
Please for the love of god remember the children when you post.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
The GPL motivates development because DEVELOPERS are enticed by the idea that derivatives of their code will REMAIN open, and that their projects will flourish.
If corporate consumers of free SW prefer BSD licensing, then they're free to choose from the tiny subset of free sw that's licensed under BSD. Their demand is NOT going to motivate the creation of significant additional BSD software.
I wish to edit my open source license files. Which is a better editor for this purpose, Emacs or Vi?
First you say they work to different ends and then ask which is better. Isn't that like comparing swiss cheese to nuclear physics?
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
The purpose of the GPL is to ensure that the code will always be open.
The purpose of the BSD license is to ensure the authors are given proper credit, not necessarily to keep the code open.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Why not mark the entire post and resulting thread as -1 flamebait now and get it over with? While it's an interesting question and I'm sure there are places where people could have a nice mature and rational discussion about it, /. is just NOT one of those places...
Anyways, as an encore, I think the next posting should be "VI vs. Emacs: Which is the best text editor for your needs?"
Which Open Source Operating System do you see being used more often in the enterprise? Which has more development momentum?
BSD? Older than GNU/Linux, and people can do whatever they want, including take someone elses work and make it proprietary.
Or GNU/Linux, the younger OS where the GPL creates a snowball effect?
Furthermore, software containing embedded GPL-based code must be licensed under the GPL.
This is incorrect. The GPL does not require that derivitive works be GPLed. The key is that the restrictions placed on derivitive works (you must give up the source code and exclusive rights to redistribution) makes the resulting code effectively like the GPL. You can still use some other license for the derivitive code, and once you stop redistributing you can stop giving out the source code. Plus, nothing prevents you (as the copyright holder) from reusing the source that is yours in a non-GPL-derived product.
Clear as mud? Good.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Vi or emacs
Windows or Linux
Replublican or Democrat
Development or Systems
Apache or IIS
Apple or Intel
Oh wait.... geeze...
Bet this
The BSD license is great if you are a big company and lots of little folks like me are contributing BSD software that you can use in any proprietary way you wish. But it's not so great for those little people, because they are functioning as sort of unpaid employees. GPL gives the whole situation a balance.
If you take the range of GPL, LGPL or GPL + exception, and BSD, you have a range of licenses for essentially any business purpose. Each has their strong and weak points.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I'll get beaten down for posting this again, but having used FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Redhat, and SuSe extensively over the last ten years:
The Linux distro cloud is like an English garden - wild stuff going on all over the place, very easy for someone with a new idea to break in and produce a distro, and in general there is a frenetic level of innovation.
The BSD systems are more like the lawn of the base commander at Camp Pendleton - each blade named, serial numbered, and rarely do they get out of line.
I'm running FreeBSD most everywhere because I don't have to jack with it. I've got SuSe on my desktop because I've got a captive Windows thingy with accounting data and people around here pay me to touch SuSe, so its worthwhile to be up to speed.
Each has their place - I love the massive amount of GPL stuff in
Yes, I've heard of portage, no, I haven't touched it yet - consider enlightening without flaming if you're a guru
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
That would be a dup. vi is BSD-licensed and emacs is GPL.
...just kidding!
I gotta say, the GPL strikes me as being a far better bargain for whomever is producing copyrighted works (which might be a developer, might be a business, who knows). It gives them the one thing that might be as valuable as the copyrights to their own code: access to the source of derivative works.
sigs are a waste of space
The project/company should decide if they want the product to be used by businesses or not.
For example.. if Eclipse wants everybody to adopt SWT, then they better chose a BSDish license. jEdit for example had chosen the GPL, thus limiting its appeal as a general purpose platform... but maybe that wasn't their "business plan".
Conversely, MySQL wants to be the only MySQL player. They want to dominate the MySQL vendor market (and want a big piece of the DB market). So GPL is a good way to keep themselves as the main player. GPL is good if you want a closed source sales model while staying open source. MySQL understands that many people will want to link to closed source products so they charge for that privilege.
It is not logical to expect (IMO) that a company contracting another company is always going to want (or be willing to accept) a GPL style license, so GPL'ing something limits its use in corporate sectors (again IMO).
Now many times if you go and ask the library authors' they'll grant special permission especially in a case like this, but it's a hastle to work with. And you can argue that you should fight for free software all over, but it doesn't make business sense in every case, especially when your company is not in the business of providing support.
Also the LGPL solves this sort of issue to some extent, but I'd say the LGPL is more BSD then GPL, but that's a bit of an overstatement...
YES! FREAKING YES! BSD IS BETTER FOR THE ENTERPRISE! Companies can take the code as their own and sell it without giving anything back! It's obviously better for those enterprises!
Man. What some people get paid to say.
Why would we debate a text editor vs an operating system?
I believe that the BSD license is a better license then the GPL because the BSD has less license restrictions and enables software companies/developers the ability to link their software product with a library under the BSD license without having to release their source code.
GPL reminds me of a virus, only license wise.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
"Would it kill people to speak in normal sentences instead of Market Speak(TM)? This entire article is just silly. Of course businesses prefer the BSD license. It places fewer restrictions on them, and allows them true ownership of derivitive works. That gives them something to later sell or use as a barganing chip."[1]
As oppossed to the bargaining chip one would have by taking GPL code and using it internally. Plus the simply using it "as is" in embedded systems.
"Of course many OSS authors prefer the GPL. It forces companies and other users to help pay for development by giving back."
KHTML-Apple.*
Plus as mentioned previously you can't force anyone to release anything as long as they keep it internal, were they can use it as a competitive advantage (shades of the BSD lockin argument).
*I should also point out that Nvidia and others demonstrate that one can gain some of the GPL community advantages without giving the good stuff away.
[1] The "web services" issue is also a big loophole.
IMHO I find the BSD license more straightforward and honest, and not filled with so many "but.., but.."s
BSD vs GPL: FIGHT!!!
Seriously, didn't Matt Asay already explain this, only a couple lines above this "Which license is better!?!OMGWTFLOL!!!
"...no one open source license is ideal in every circumstance. Different licenses serve different ends..."
It doesn't get any simpler than that, and I can't believe that anyone could believe that either license is 100% better, or better in any application than the other. Christ, even Richard Fucking Stallman has agreed that the BSD license is more suitable for some uses than the FSF's own Copyleft licenses.
That being said, I'm an LGPL or "GPL+exception clause" person, myself. If you want to change the community's code, you have to give back. However, simply building on top of a Free platform, like GNU Classpath, or GNOME is different. Building on platforms like these expands that platform's usage, so it's still of benefit to the community that built that platform.
The Free desktop that Just Works
The BSD license offers more advantages to companies looking to sell software derived from existing software. They can take BSD-licensed code, do what they wish with it and treat the results as their own proprietary code.
The GPL license offers advantages to end-users long-term. Anyone wanting to take advantage of the starting point GPL'd software offers has to return the favor in the form of their code. Essentially it makes developers let other people take advantage of their work in the same way they took advantage of others' work. It also guarantees that, as an end-user, you're never in a position where you can't get fixes and modifications to the software.
Which one is better for you as the author of the software who has to decide on the license to release it under depends on your goals for the software.
notepad.exe!!!
OMFG, dudex0r!
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Ok GPL is really a free socialist "copy-left".
It is far from capitalistic you cannot capitalize on GPL based appilcations etc.. becasue it is almost free ( you must pass on what you recieved ).
Anyway besides all this jazz, I am just against building weapons for offensive strikes or actions that are made from GPL based products. Example cannot use Linux for the guidance computer of a missle that is used to strike civilian targets etc..
Or a robot that goes into battle using open source apps etc...
An enterprise can always approach the author of a GPLed software component and license it. Then they can do whatever they want, according to the alternate license, like shipping binaries with no source. He would be a fool who would not take money from someone who wants to ship proprietary binaries containing his program or library, under alternate licensing!
But, if there are are too many joint authors, that's a problem. It may be impractical to get everyone to agree to set up the alternate licensing.
If all the authors have assigned their copyright to some organization that is politically against proprietary software, that's also a problem for you. (That's why those FSF people want copyright assignment. They know too damn well that the GPL by itself isn't enough!)
These aren't inherent problems with the GPL, though, only with the specific situation involving the GPL.
Under the right conditions, when there are only a few authors or maybe just one, the key difference between the GPL and BSD is that you have to obtain permission from the authors of the GPLed program for proprietary use. When you do that, you have a bit of advantage too, because that program remains non-free to your competition. If they want the technology, they have to approach those authors and buy it separately from you. Heck, you could even buy the complete, exclusive rights to the GPLed program. Afterward, none of your competitors could make proprietary use of the technology, only the uses permitted by the GPL'ed public releases (which you can continue to make, as the new owner!) So you see, it's pretty damn smart to write GPLed software: you leave yourself open as a nice acquisition target for someone who wants the technology.
That's what kind of makes the BSD license stupid; the authors have just given away the permission to everyone to do anything. It's a good license to put on the smallest possible piece of code that will make a name for you as a great hacker and help you secure future contracts. It's also good for your reference implementation of some spec that you are trying to push onto everyone else, whether it be a data format, protocol, or what have you. Otherwise you're just doing free work for some software venture capitalist, which is stupid. I mean, if you want to help people, go spend time with sick children or something. Doh!
My biggest problem with the GPL is the FSF's position that even dynamically linking against a library under GPL is enough to make the resulting code a derivative work (and thus also subject to the GPL). The BSD license affords much more flexibility. The LGPL is also not so encumbered. (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/lgpl.html)
Note also that the FSF's interpretation may not be binding, but it hasn't been tested in court (that I'm aware of, and I recently attended a symposium on this very topic). So, in my mind, it creates an unacceptable exposure for anyone who wants to develop software but not adopt the GPL. The BSD license is substantially safer.
More discussion on this point: http://www.oslawblog.com/2005/01/static-linking-gp l-and-lgpl.html
geek. lawyer.
"The GPL is one of the most exciting, innovative capitalist tools ever created."
Capitalist?! If Richard Stallman plucking bits of tuna fish sandwich from his beard is the new face of capitalism, I suppose the suit and tie I wear to work makes me a Ferengi...
For example, software contributors (corporate or otherwise) don't have to worry about contributions being used to subsidize competing proprietart software.
For example, if IBM contributed code to FreeBSD, then Sun would be able to add that to Solaris.
But in the end, the license doesn't matter as much as community-building. Apache, *BSD, BIND, PostgreSQL, etc. all have very large and vibrant communities behind them. And once the community reaches a certain size, then proprietary competition simply doesn't matter. This is because one is competing with Free either way.
My firm mostly uses the GPL. This is largely because a lot of our work involves extending other GPL'd software, so we are required to do so.
Also, our original projects are licensed under the GPL simply because it avoids subsidizing the competition as mentioned above. However, we really don't care that much one way or another, and if a project requred a BSD-style license, we would be happy to use it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Google can decide
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
The article submitter should be flayed alive. The /. editor should be drubbed soundly.
Use the GPL if you're going to get upset if someone uses your code commercially without paying you. GPL won't quite prohibit that kind of thing, but it will make most business models involving it impractical.
Use the GPL if you have strong philosophical objections to the basic idea of intellectual property. If, eventually, a sufficiently large portion of code is GPLed, then it might become prohibitively difficult for anyone to make non-GPLed code without re-inventing the wheel. Dream on.
Use the BSD license if you just want your code to be useful to as many people as possible.
...as providers of code, they hardly want to release under the BSD license. A GPL license is often acceptable where BSD is not. As consumers of code, they love the BSD license. As for OSS authors, I think the requirements of the GPL are excellent at promoting OSS. So I think the contributors should be release under the GPL (except where reasonable such as standards you want everyone to follow). What the consumers want is really irrelevant since they don't contribute in the making. Why should you aim to please someone where you have nothing to gain?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How many companies, as opposed to not-for-profit organisations have actually released software as BSD? For a company, *releasing* software as BSD makes no sense. Here, take my work. Oh, Mr Competitor, of course you can use my money and research to help you compete against me. No, you don't have to give me any improvements you make. With the GPL the company is assured of getting any improvements back. It's taking the gamble that while its money could be used to help its competitor if they use the code for anything it has to release *that* as GPL so that it can use it. Also if its competitor makes an improvement it will be able to use that improvement itself. For a company *releasing* software under an open-source license BSD has no real advantages and many disadvantages.
For a company that *consumes* open-source software - and by this - I don't mean using Linux on the desktop but say taking open-source software and using it in their own programs or repackaging it, BSD is obviously superior as they can take as much as they like for free, profit from it and not give anything back.
Personally I think if BSD was the predominant open-source license you won't be seeing nearly as many companies releasing their work as open-source. For for-profit companies, BSD gives all the benefits to the selfish companies and penalises the generous companies. GPL is more fair from a for-profit perspective.
I think a flamewar is in order - Vi/EMACS style!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
If the private company is not distributing the software beyond themselves; they are under no obligation to provide the source to any but their own employees and only on request and only at the cost of media. Once you factor in all that, the GPL is just heavenly for compiled-in libraries for internally-used software. Methinks your lab has a basic misunderstanding of the GPL?
the ultimate solution is neither, i.e. absolutely free code... with no required assignments of credit... no required delivery of source code... no strings whatsoever... once you put your code out there then anyone can do anything with it.
coming to a concensus over any other solution is just squabbling over people's different preferences.
My biggest problem with the GPL is the FSF's position that even dynamically linking against a library under GPL is enough to make the resulting code a derivative work (and thus also subject to the GPL). I agree. It was largely this clause that inspired me to recommend the use of the MPL instead of the GPL for a product that my company intends to release in the future.
They at least deserved mention in TFA.
But regarding the specific GPL-vs-BSD troll; I must say I prefer GPL; because every GPL'd project I worked on at previous employers, I can still find that code out there if I ever need it again. With the BSD'd stuff I saw at a previous employer, there's no way for me to get the same version I had used there.
I think it's about time we hash this out once and for all: is purple better than the GPL? The colour purple has several significant advantages over the GPL. For example, a woman can wear a purple dress, but they can't wear the GPL. You can paint your walls purple, but can't paint your walls GPL. Purple grapes are quite yummy, whereas the GPL (in hard copy) leaves a paper-cut-like after taste, and has little nutritional value.
Still, the GPL is a better software license than the colour purple, which isn't a license at all. Especially if you want to ensure that derivitive works are also GPL'ed.
Next week: which is better? Mr. T, or the GPL?
* * *
Okay -- this is silly. Neither license is better than the other. They have different purposes, and which is "better" is completely subjective, and depeneds on ones view-point. If you're a company which wants to get some free source code to implement a complex feature set, but who doesn't want to have to share their enhancements, modifications, or any source code at all, then you'd probably like the BSD license better.
If, on the other hand, you're a corporation in an area which isn't directly computer related, and need to create some custom software which you can't realistically afford to develop on your own, than GPL (or LGPL) is a significantly better solution, as you can crate a community of others with the same needs to develop a standard solution. Or you can help to improve an existing piece of GPL'ed software in order to make it work better for your customers by ensuring it will work well with your data sources/applications/operating systems/hardware.
In the end, which one is better depends on which one aligns better with your goals, and often depends on whether you're a producer or a consumer of the software in question.
So can we now stop the insanity?
Yaz.
"Please for the love of god remember the children when you post."
So should we license our children under the BSD license, or the GPL one?
Where do I moderate slashdot stories as trolls?
Command attempted to use minibuffer while in minibuffer
It all depends on whether you are Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, right?
while it's true there are lots of people taking BSD code and not contributing anything back,chances are they aren't doing anything you'd want anyway. BSD is obviously worthy, look at apache and all the *bsd os's. all highly successful
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The GPL is what I like to call the viral open source license. If you use a GPL database or library you must automatically make your code open source. In a secret Coronel Recipee Scenario this makes no sense.
From the point of view of people actually choosing to roll out a Linux or BSD, most people don't really care about the licence. They only care about how secure it is, how flexible it is, and how much it's going to cost.
From one point of view, BSD is superior to Linux as a server - which is why I'd probably choose BSD over Enterprise RedHat where I could get away with it.
The only time I have to resist using BSD is when there's some proprietary software that's supported under Linux and not BSD.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Wait, which pointlessly divisive question were you asking again?
/usr/share/misc/license.template on OpenBSD: /*
* Copyright (c) CCYY YOUR NAME HERE
*
* Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
* purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
* copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
*
* THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
* WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
* MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
* ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
* WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
* ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
* OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
*/
<sigh>
This is mostly on topic: I don't understand why the original BSD license is incompatible with the GPL. I understand why the FSF thinks the "obnoxious advertising clause" is a problem (and somewhat agree with them), but I can not grasp why that could possibly make it GPL incompatible. I've read through the GPL, and unless my memory is fading, I'm pretty sure that there is nothing that says "derivative works may not include obnoxious advertising requirements" or anything like that or "the FSF can place arbitrary restrictions on how this software can be used for their own convenience". Indeed, if the latter case was true, people would (rightfully) avoid the GPL like the plague. What gives Richard Stallman and the FSF the power to dictate that you can not mix GPL and original-BSD code even though there is nothing in either license that suggests that? I'm not trying to troll. I've got nothing against the GPL and I dislike the original BSD license. I'd really like to know.
Slashdot: You will never find a more wretched hive of spam and zealotry. We must be cautious.
Alas, I can think of many programs being released by big corporations under the GNU GPL.
Enterprises just wants other's software released under BSD.
If individual developers/small groups want to make any money from their work or get enterprises collaborating in their project, they should go with the GNU GPL as well.
Of course, sometimes the LGPL will be preferable. And -rarely- the GPL+linking exception.
Windows users:
Internet Explorer is obsolete. Please upgrade to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
"Please for the love of god remember the children when you post."
So should we license our children under the BSD license, or the GPL one?
Really depends on the source I think. My fiance doesn't let me share my source anymore, and I certainly don't contribute it back to the tree, shudder.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
I often program things without really caring if someone takes it and uses it to make money. (Oh no, whatever will I do, my code is useful, what's for dinner?) But every once in a while I have something more complete and polished that I don't want someone to just grab and sell.
Libraries tend to be the former, and I release those BSD. Software projects and games tend to be the latter, and I release those under GPL.
Basically, if I feel like I could sell it in its current form, but don't want to, it gets GPLed just so other people can't trivially profit off me. But if it's not in a sellable form, it gets BSDed so maybe someone else can use it to build on. I'm not obsessive about "free software", I just don't want people profiting off my work without putting at least some of theirs into it.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Next week's Slashdot article schedule:
- Sun: Open-source editors: vi or Emacs?
- Mon: Open-source desktops: KDE or GNOME?
- Tue: Open-source revolutionaries: RMS or Linus?
- Wed: Open-source editors: vi or Emacs?
- Thu: Open-source scripting: Perl or Python?
- Fri: Open-source platforms: Linux or FreeBSD
- Sat: Open-source revolutionaries: RMS or Linus?
What's wrong with you guys... of course its Emacs.
[it had to be said, there were only votes for vi.]
Gravity Sucks
Around Y2K, I worked for a company called Cyrano.com. It produced testing
.org domains set up. The project is still running, and
software. We had done very well in the run-up to Y2K - lots of people wanted
to perform regression testing on their database applications. We were a small
company - much smaller than e.g. Rational.com (Now borged by IBM), but felt
that we had a good product. The management decided that the best way to help convince
customers to buy our product, in the face of arguments that Cyrano might not
be around in a couple of years time, was to open source the code. In these
circumstances, the obvious license to choose is the GPL: it ensures that
the company benefits from any changes anyone else makes.
I spent a very long time going through the files, adding the appropriate
header comments, and removing any comments naming individuals, especially
individuals who were no longer with the company, before setting up the
project at SourceForge: http://opensta.sourceforge.net/. There were
also OpenSTA.com and
I believe that several ex-employees, made redundant after the company went
tits-up, are now self-employed and using the application.
At the very least, open-sourcing the project meant that the codebase was not
lost when the company folded.
Flame On!
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Oh great. Another useless BSD/GPL troll article. This is the kind of pointless in-fighting that plagues all intellectual movements. It just drags everything down.
Here we have two licenses that are nearly identical. Especially when compared to, say, the Microsoft EULA. What's the point of arguing?
If you like the terms of the GPL, use the GPL. If you like the terms of BSD, use BSD. If you want to use them but add a trademark restriction, go ahead.
You can also offer no license at all (a-la djb) which means people can use but not redistribute your software, go ahead.
If you want to place your code in the public domain (or a "treat this as if there was a public domain, and please don't sue me" license).
If you want to license your software some OTHER way than those 6 choices (two licenses with or without trademark restriction, no license, or public domain) please THINK CAREFULY. You're not "being cool" because you chose Bob's Cool Legalese-Free License (BCLFL). You're just wasting people's time and opening yourself up to lawsuits.
That's all you need to know. Stop the petty squabbles about "OMG THE GPL IS NOT TEH FREEDOM!" and "BSD R0XX 4 BIZ!". Let's compare Free software (BSD, GPL) against Unfree software (Windows, Photoshop).
Here's an analogy:
You need to pick a player for your basketball team. You have a bunch of choices, including:
BILL S. D. - he's 7'2"
GARY P. L. - he's 7'1"
MIKE S. - he's 3'5", overweight, and smells like shit
Now, do you sit there arguing about wether Bill or Gary is taller? Who cares, pick either one, just make sure the other team picks Mike.
This is piss funny. Whoever wrote the answer to that FAQ must have gone on to a long career in politics.
How we know is more important than what we know.
(That has be said many, many times on this article)
. . . . is of the subset of companies willing to consider opensourcing their software, very, very few would be willing to BSD license their code, as opposed to GPL licensing it.
At least with the GPL, they 'feel' like no competitor will 'abuse' their property (i.e. take it and not contribute it back).
That should tell you something about why most companies prefer the BSD license. It have very, *very* little to do with code they themselves are releasing.
This doesn't mean that John Q. programmer shouldn't ever use the BSD. But think carefully about what it means when someone says most companies prefer the BSD license.
Microsoft has said they prefer the BSD license. How many BSD licensed Microsoft packages are there?
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I fear GPL because I have to obey some rules (to release or not to relase the code that I'm doing because I use a peice of GPL code). In addition there is GPL and LGPL... that creates confusion.
I love BSD because I can do whatever I want, that's it.
If something what to be free (in every sense of the word) the software is released under the BSD license. If there are some strings attached they choose another license and I don't bother to look at it.
I would also argue that the different licenses serve very different psychologies of programming - that different programmers and different problems require different social structures and different temperments, and that the different licenses are good at gelling together those individuals you would want in that group.
The different licenses, then, not only have different strengths in what they can do (for a business or whatever), but also in what they can pull together in the way of people to do the doing.
I don't think pro-BSDers and pro-GPLers disagree as vehemently as they sometimes do because of a religious war over license details, as much as they disagree because the personalities within any given group will be much more homogemous than between the two groups.
That each license has strong and weak points almost goes without saying. I doubt you could write a single license that would even function under all contingencies, never mind work well. As always, on that issue, I really believe diversity is strength, and that F/OSS is as successful as it is precisely because of the rich diversity.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Which one would I use? Well that's tough. But, if I didn't care who used it, I would place it under BSD. If I wanted to make sure *my* code always stayed open, I'd use the CDDL.
as the massochistic lesbian used to say ...
Vimacs
Winnux
Republicrat
Development Systems
ApachIIS
MacTel
Now we just need someone to invent the half of those that don't exist.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The GPL: The code is Free and will always remain Free. As a developer if you don't like it, tough, no one cares about the developers Freedom.
The BSDL: The developers are Free to do what they like. The code may not always remain Free.
See? See why we have so many arguments? GPL zealots apply their definition of Free to the BSD and scream "The BSDL isn't Free!". The BSDL zealots apply their definition of Free to the GPL and scream "The GPL isn't Free!"
The GPL & BSDL just have different focuses for their Freedom, that's all.
Which is the best flamefest?
BSD License vs. GPL
Linux vs. FreeBSD
Emacs vs. vi
C++ vs. Java
Python vs. Perl
PHP vs. Ruby on Rails
Microsoft vs. SCO
TROLL
Because:
1) It offers *zero* real protection, *especially* for *small developers* with no legal team to back them up.
2) For people that *are* honest, it causes a hell of a lot of interworking problems.
These are quite simply the facts, regardless of all the religious beliefs that are continously being flaunted above by misguided GPL zealots.
END TROLL
I marked this as a troll because that is how most people will percieve it. Nevertheless it's the truth.
Which is a better licensing model for open-source applications: BSD or GPL? What do you think?" Translated to Slashdotian: FLAME WAR!!! EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!!! God forbid if this gets posted to OSNews.
It's like asking "What's better: A semi-truck or a Corvette?" to which the answer is really a question. ("What are you doing?")
If you need to move tons of goods, a 'vette is going to do you very little good. If you want to impress the neighbors, compensate for a little deficiency, and get somewhere fast, a semi is not the way to go.
Each license has it's advantages and disadvantages. Saying that license X is "better for the enterprise" is like saying that "vehicle N is better for the highway".
Doing what? What are you trying to do?
"The enterprise" might mean an aircraft parts manufacturer with a small team of in-house programmers writing internal apps. To these programmers, GPL vs BSD means squat. Who cares?
"The enterprise" might mean a small software company selling vertical solutions to a niche market. GPL vs BSD means lots.
"The enterprise" might mean a large company selling products that include some software, but are primarily hardware. GPL vs BSD means a little, but probably not too much, mostly the annoyance of posting some source code in some obscure (but legally compliant) subdomain of a large, multi-gigabyte website.
The article is a troll, and I'm biting. Dang nabbit!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Which color is better? Green or Red? Film at 11.
Clones are people two.
"Frankly, we resent the air our programmers use up; how come that's not mentioned in thet Coyote agreement thing we hear about?" said a spokesman.
In other news, it was found that people like to be given free money and have sex with beautiful people.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
But in the end, the BSD offers more benefits to enterprise customers.
Of course it does. Getting something for free with no strings attached is better than getting something for free with some responsibilities.
The "enterprise customer", however, is where the argument falls apart and shows that Mark really doesn't know what he's talking about, because in Free Software development there are no customers. The GPL isn't about a customer relationship, it doesn't put any restrictions on customers, i.e. users. It is a contract between developers only and it puts them on equal footing, i.e. mine is yours if yours is mine - we share and both sides get the same deal.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I don't think anyone would disagree the LGPL is a nice compromise between the two positions. But that doesn't address the core question all it says is that "if you can't decide between the plusses and minuses here is a way to get some of both..."
In an enterprise situation you need to be efficient with funds, and that includes being intelligent with it. If I support a project because it offers business benefit to me I'm OK with others doing the same. I wouldn't be OK with some consultancy wrapping it up into something they can then flog at high marging because they're in effect then stealing my Intellectual Property - not being compelled to giving me or the project any return benefit. Given the number of projects out there with GPL I think I may not be the only one with that view.
Greedy? No. Just making sure we all play by the same rules.
Software complexity grows over time such that the only way to compete is to build on existing software.
If the base is GPLed then you *effectively* can't sell it. This is wonderful for big companies because it means that our only options as developers is to work for them.
If the base uses a BSD license, the little guys are able to use it and can compete on a level playing field with the behemoths like Microsoft.
Let's free ourselves from the domination of the software giants by using the BSD license and generate a new wave of MSVs (micro software vendors) that will wipe out the Microsofts, IBMs, Adobes and Apples of the world.
in this very old article GPL vs BSD you can get answer. And i think that he is right. "Which you choose depends on what you need and what you value. There's nothing more to it than that."
It doesn't matter how great my code is, I know I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. I didn't design the chips, the OS, the compiler, the language and most of the design patterns and data structures will have been used in other applications before mine, I just arranged them in a pattern that was unique to my application. Do I deserve to get paid for my work? Only if I market it and the BSD licence doesn't stop me from doing that. Do I want to spend the rest of my life hiring lawyers chasing people who should know better, no - I just want to code. Do I want to spend the rest of my life concidering code patches for an application I'm no longer interested in, no - I'm probably thinking of the next big thing. Do I want to be the next Bill Gates, hell no. I'm not saying the guy isn't happy, but to be honest my life is complicated enough without all that power and responsibility. I may not be rich, but I don't have whole websites devouted to hating me either (yet). To be honest I think that people getting mega rich off the back of software alone is an event of the past. If your going to get rich making software, your going to need to be selling whatever it is that your software makes easier to produce.
I understand that most of that applies to the GPL as well, but how your software free if your forcing an ideology on to people? Thats just not my way, not that its a bad way. At the end of the day, your contribution to your code is tiny, if you didn't write it somebody else will. If your writing something genuinely uselful, let everybody else use it. Remember the guy that invented the wheel, the hammer, the horse bit? Me neither, but I'm grateful everyday and so is the rest of the world - surely thats worth more than ego.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
You're barking up the wrong tree. Yes Linux (the kernel) is GPLed and Yes the BSD operating systems are BSD licensed. BUT if you look at the applications typically installed on both systems you'll find a mix of GPL and BSD licensed applications and it will surprise you how many core applications are BSD licensed.
If you took away the BSD licensed applications away from Linux it wouldn't be of much use as a server operating system.
Jason.
I know that most here (rightfully) hate the DMCA.
...
However, a DMCA Notice & Takedown can be used if they're infringing upon your copyright, it costs nothing, and you can find directions for filing one online.
Or the fact that you can post the violator to Slashdot as a story, get help from a few projects designed to help enforce the GPL (I forgot the name, gpl-violations.net or something), etc.
But don't let these facts get in your way while saying it gives us "zero" real protection.
It also induces the honest to contribute their code back. Just because they're honest doesn't mean they're selfish, and they may be required to by the license.
I mean, I don't see IBM doing JFS for *BSD
[/troll]
I am the lead developer of a program that is both free and commercial.
My problem with the GPL is its viral nature. I simply cannot use GPLed code inside my program as that would force me to expose all of my code, something I am not comfertable doing.
I would have no problem re-releasing any direct changes I made to GPLed code, but having my own code exposed in a very competitive marketplace is simply not an option.
So I choose to stay away from the GPL and users of my free products might be missing some of the functionality access to the GPL code may have given.
In my view, the winners from GPL are (mostly) highly technical people and the losers are the less technical end-users that may miss on additional functionality, free or not.
Personally, I have released quite a bit of code under the Public Domain License (which is free as in "the air you breath"). If your goal is to improve the world for everyone, just give it away, it doesn't matter if someone makes a profit on it or not if your end goal is a better world for all.
I release source under the BSD license - anyone can take that code and sell it as-is or with any improvements or modifications, and they never have to release their code, nor do they have to open source anything they create with my code. All they have to do is put my copyright notice on their product. Correct? I can also sell my code separately as closed source, on its own or part of another program, right?
I release my source under the GPL.
Here's where I get confused.
If someone else uses my code, any changes or additions they make must also be open sourced under the GPL, right?
You can sell code released under the GPL, but you also have to make the source available for what they purchased.
Anyone can sell the GPL'd code I wrote under a commercial license if the buyer of the commercial product also receives the source code. However, that company doesn't have to release their code for changes, improvements, etc, if they pay that fee. ???
I guess I don't understand how RedHat and MySQL make money selling these commercial licenses of GPL'd code.
If I buy a commercial license of MySQL, I can make any changes I want, and I don't have to release my source, correct? Or I can include MySQL in my commercial product without my custom source code.
Am I even close?
Only victims make excuses
You missed out the most important of all.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
gain in using the BSD license instead of the GPL one?
One of our core products is the YAZ toolkit for Z39.50 communications. That is under a BSD-style license, since it is in our interest to increase the use of Z39.50, and with it our potential market. In that we have succeeded well, we guess that about half of world's Z39.50 products are based on our tools, and we have made ourselves a name in the community of Z39.50 users.
Another core product, the Zebra search engine is licensed under GPL, because we don't mind small businesses and universities playing with it, but we don't want to see it absorbed into a competing product. We also sell commercial licenses for it, should someone want one.
Of course, we also do some custom work that remains closed source.
The difference for us is not the amount of patches we receive - that is about equal, and small in any case - but the different licenses serve different purposes.
In Murphy We Turst
I'm really bad when it gets to understanding legal texts, so someone might help me understand the following.
Situation 1: Our company uses a GPL'ed product internally, adds it's own modifications, and continues with using the modified version. It never sells a product containing original or modified parts of the GPL'ed code, use is purely internal. No statements or contributions are being made. This is legal, correct?
Situation 2: Our company creates a product, let's say an appliance, with lots of our own code inside, and some GPL'ed code, such as libraries. The libraries itself are unmodified and are merely used by our code. What is the correct legal action to take? Nothing, as GPL'ed code has not been modified? Stating that the product uses that GPL'ed library, which can be downloaded from the authors site? Making the full sourcecode, i.e. the libraries code and our own code, publicly available?
Thanks for clarifications
there should be no licensing at all. only truly free software
Here is my "How to choose a free software license guide.
Since CowboyNeal insists I have the opportunity to say this, I will.
If you are using an MIT/BSD type license, the license itself allows you to do a lot of things, but if you don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg, you have to give back. So you have a moral obligation to open your own work.
If you fail to open up your own work, you can't get help from others, so your work just eventually ends up shriveling up and dying, unless you prop it up with patents and threats and bribes and other immoralities. And even if you prop it up, it does not get the benefit of open peer review, so it ends up inferior.
Also, lurking on the openBSD lists definitely leaves one with the understanding that the projects which use MIT/BSD type license must be careful to keep the licenses in their source trees compatible, just like the GPL. Once you do recognize the need to open it up, BSD/MIT has the same inductive effect as the GPL.
So, while you have a little more time lapse before what comes around goes around, the natural consequences are that anyone using source under BSD/MIT type licenses without opening their own sources basically doesn't get the full benefits of open source.
And while I'm trolling, I'll just note that, the brain being able to emulate a CPU after a manner of speaking, patenting software results in a conundrum: how does one read the patent for understanding without first getting a license? You can't understand software unless you at least try to walk through it in your head.
If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:
That's like asking what's the better editor, Vi or the Gimp? It depends on what you intend to do!
If you want to ensure the source code will always be free/open, the GPL is the better licence.
If you want to make the software available for all to do with as they please, but retain copyright and credits, then the BSD licence is better.
If Linux were licensed under a BSD licence, Microsoft could simply take it and sell a modified version, without giving back to the community. With the GPL, they can take it and sell it, but also have to open their modifications so everyone can benefit from them.
The BSD licence is great for supporting software, though, for example a player for an open format (like Ogg Vorbis) to gain widespread adoption.
So think before you choose a licence...
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
A simple heuristics for choosing between GPL and BSD is community.
If your goal is to to build a community of users or developers around a long-term, evolving project, and ensure that it remains free, then GPL is a good choice. Typical example: Linux.
OTOH, if your goal is that people just use your code, or your project rapidly reaches maturity, and you don't care about community building, then BSD-style is a better choice. It wouldn't make much sense, for example, for libpng to be GPL'd, since one of its purpose was to be an alternative to other closed or proprietary formats such as GIF.
BSD-style licensing ensures that all applications, free or commercial, can use your code. Of course you could still use LGPL but this becomes a religious or political issue (notwithstanding the fact that it prevents static linking).
GPL is a bridge that lets competing companies work on the same code without worrying that the other part will just screw it up making it incompatible with everybody elses. It levels the playing field in a way the BSD license doesnt. BSD is fine in theory but human/corporate nature just rape, pillage and move on.
The BSD people doesnt seem to understand that the biggest reason people use GPL is that they dont want to watch while someone takes their code, alter it and then charges them a bucket of money for their own code. If *BSD would switch to GPL they would take of like a rocket.
HTTP/1.1 400
For those wishing to understand the differences between open source licenses, I recommend the book "Open Source Licensing" by lawyer Lawrence Rosen (it is also available online at http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm). There is also an interesting discussion on this topic summarized here http://wiki.na-mic.org/Wiki/index.php/NAMIC_Wiki:C ommunity_Licensing.
BSD License vs. GPL Linux vs. FreeBSD Emacs vs. vi C++ vs. Java Python vs. Perl PHP vs. Ruby on Rails Microsoft vs. SCO
These are hardly flamefests. These are minor disgareements, trifling spats, compared to the greatest flame war of all time.
C64 or Spectrum?
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
this article is like waking up to see a giant boulder rolling down the road to your house...
*puts on asbestos underwear and runs for his life*
I'm a FreeBSD developer, and I find the ideas about impact of the BSD license to be different than the reality. In fact, much the reality as I've seen it is almost the opposite of the popular myths.
Companies want to put most of their changes back to the main codebase, and if they see a chance to do so, they will usually go to significant effort to make their code palatable to FreeBSD.
There are sound financial reasons for companies to want to contribute back (goodwill and tech support from the community, internal morale, avoiding the cost of conflicts when they update to a new version of our codebase, etc).
The primary issue we have with contributions are getting *individuals* to contribute. Here, the BSD licensing play a role. Among many of the people in the GPL camp, there is a significant amount of fear of feeling exploited, and people often chose the GPL due to that fear. People also choose the GPL in an idealistic belief that it result in more free code.
Whether this fear is realistic or not and whether the belief is realistic or not are subjects for debate[1]. The reality is that the fear and belief exist and influence developer availability - slightly. (Development infrastructure, code base size, culture, and public perception of "Cathedral" vs "Bazaar" models are much larger influences.)
My ideal open source license would be one that allowed limited time proprietary branching. Say, two years. Then the modifications have to be made public under the same license.
This gives the benefit from the BSD license - the work on the codebase and contributions done by those that make proprietary implementations from it (example: the Whistle Interjet based on FreeBSD, now bought by IBM), giving them time to make a profit - and it ensure that those changes become available to the open source community.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
I'm reading here that people think once you've licenced your code under the GPL you have to GPL everything all the time. That's wrong.
If the code is mine, I can do with it whatever I want whenever I want to do it. I can release v1 of myTool as GPL, use the codebase to develop v2 which is completely non-gpl. It is my code, and as long as no one else has commited GPL code to myTool v1 (or I prevent mixing of mine and his) I can drop the GPL like a bad habbit. I just can't withdraw what I've allready published as GPL code.
The big and important part about the GPL is that you can't take OSS code, close it and redistribute it without the source without violating the GPL. That is the main reason for enterprises to choose GPL over BSD. Your competitors can't unhook you, they must cooperate if they use your code for their products.
That's why GPL is better for enterprises than BSD licencing.
The bottom line to all this licence discussion is that 99% of the time people don't give a hoot about software licences. They just apply common sense and fairness. Which usually is the right thing to do.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I have been hearing quite a bit recently about OpenBSD being wonderful and about how some people are having issues with the FreeBSD 5.n tree.
If you're a company which wants to get some free source code to implement a complex feature set, but who doesn't want to have to share their enhancements, modifications, or any source code at all, then you'd probably like the BSD license better.
If it is THEIR code they can do with THEIR code WHATEVER THEY FRICKING WANT!. They can release every odd iteration under the GPL, every straight one under BSD, printout every tenth on every billboard on the planet, lock every 100th away in a vault and require people who want to look at it to chop their right arm off and sell their soul to the devil. IT IS THEIR CODE! THEY ABSOLUTAMENTE 0W|/|Z0R3D IT! They decide.
If I decide tomorrow the GPL sucks, I just don't publish any further developement under the GPL. If you want that feature I've developed after that you'll have to pay 10 000$ for each CPU using it and won't see a single line of code. And you won't be able to do anything about it. It is my code and my call under which licence I give it to you. Allthough you may go to sf.net and download the last GPLd iteration. But then you must comply with the GPL. It's that simple. Understand?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
People WILL buy such software.
MySQL sells quite a lot of SW.
Trolltech sells quite a lot of SW.
If you want to gevelop a GPL program using TrollTech QT kit, go agead and use their GPL version. Do you want to develop a proprietary version? No problem just buy commersial version of their toolkit.
Thank you for what will surely be the most intelligent post in this thread.
So sayeth one slashdot user to the other.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The BSD vs GPL debate is a vast and oft-visited issue, and in no way will be resolved any time soon. The simple fact is that each is better for different things.
The poster of this story is just asking for trouble.
GPL -
GPL==Share and share alike.
LGPL==Share and share alike, but don't be a pain about it.
Use as appropriate.
He has said *of himself* that if he could not make enough money producing software, he would still program, but he would take up another job to pay the bills.
He sees as "evil" that code is hidden with trade secret and yet still copyrighted. That means that you never get to use the code and just trying to get the code is impossible if you aren't an insider.
Whether the code is sold or not is not evil. You could, as far as I read RMS, use copyright to forbid people from using your code under copyright, but still allow the purchaser to have the code. If it is copyrighted, it doesn't mean you can take lines and use them in your code, so what is the seller losing when handing out source? Obscurity - you cannot tell what the code is doing without a lot of work or trusting them.
That is where evil can get in.
When people against the BSD licence shout tales of horror and evil when you release something under the BSD licence... is there something wrong with donating something and expecting nothing in return?
It's as if you've wretched a knife between their ribs by the very notion of giving away something for free, with no restrictions.
It's the software developers choice what they want to do with their code, not someone elses.
I heard that it takes 45 minutes to write a new license for some code. But that claim is unsubstantiated.
BSD is truly free. You can do wahtever you want with the code.
GPL is free with string attached.
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
nothing has hurt linux as much a gpl. and thats a fact. as much as the gpl zealots who are mostly communists and anarchists want to claim otherwise its the truth.
if linux was not gpl it would have made massive inroads into the desktop, because of gpl it hasn't and never will.
the fsf is too busy trying to push socialist politics down people throats to worry about anything else.
Shouldn't this be in politics.slashdot.org?
I like the GPL because it's a copyleft. If you take my work and modify it, that's fine, but you can't turn around and tell me I can't copy or distribute your modified version.
On the other hand, I think the BSD license is advantageous because it doesn't have the requirement to release source code. In this sense, I feel the BSD license is more free.
I've created my own license, the QingPL, which I consider the perfect license. Basically, you can do anything you want with the code without any restrictions, as long as you don't sue anyone for copyright infringement over it or a derivative of it. About a year after I created this license Creative Commons released ShareAlike 1.0, which is essentially the same thing which a bunch of extra legalese thrown in.
Unfortunately Creative Commons decided to drop ShareAlike from its 2.0 series of licenses. The next best alternative is Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0. That one adds the requirement to attribute the author(s) of the work, which is fine if you're talking about one or two people, but can get to be a pain in the ass if you're talking about 5000 people.
Sometimes I use the QingPL for the works I create (for instance my Slashdot posts are licensed under the QingPL). But lately I've just been using ShareAlike 1.0, as that has a bit more credibility. For works that are already created I'm willing to use just about any Free license, at least until a more Free license can be found.
BSD License vs. GPL
BSD sucks, unless you are an unscrupulous startup who wants to sell someone else's work as your own. GPL is mana from heaven.
Linux vs. FreeBSD
That is GNU/Linux please.
Emacs vs. vi
yydd13#$!?&%!... GNU/Emacs!
C++ vs. Java
Both suck for different reasons. C++ is a kaleidoscope of unnecessary syntax sugar, and a junkyard of unnecessary features. The CLASSPATH variable alone condemns Java.
Python vs. Perl
Perl
PHP vs. Ruby on Rails
Who cares?
Microsoft vs. SCO
Neither. They are both rapacious corporations bent on destruction of software freedom.
an ill wind that blows no good
They're not designed for the same purpose. The GPL is designed to exert pressure on other people to behave in a certain way (mainly, to contribute back their changes) and to grant them fewer rights if they do not. The BSD license was designed to allow the code to be used by just about anyone for just about any purpose, so it grants its freedoms a bit more freely.
If you are implementing something like a networking protocol or file format reference implementation, then your most important goal is widespread adoption, and in that case you need to go with a BSD-style license (or just plain public domain). This allows vendors to roll your implementation into their proprietary products.
For an end-user application, such as a music player, that concern is less important, and so other considerations become relevant. At that point you ask yourself, "Am I comfortable with allowing FooCorp to incorporate my music player into FooMedia Center and distribute it under a proprietary license?" If you are comfortable with that, you can go with a BSD-style license, but if not, you will want to opt for a more restrictive license, such as the GPL (or LGPL, if you want to allow non-GPLed code to link against yours).
Ask yourself: if Microsoft or Apple incorporates your code into some portion of their operating system, do you rejoice because it's seeing widespread adoption, or do you get angry because they're stealing your work? In the former case, you want the BSD license, or something very like it; in the latter case, the GPL is more your cup of tea.
Also for a smaller project you may ask yourself this: if other people contribute patches, and then you go get a new job, do you want to ensure that you have the freedom to roll this code (that is mostly yours but contains others' patches) into one of your new employer's proprietary products? If you want to leave yourself that option, you consider the BSD license; if you would prefer, OTOH, that the code you've worked on *not* be rolled into a future employer's proprietary products, you would probably be happier with the GPL or perhaps LGPL (again, depending on how you feel about linking).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The Spectrum hands down....too bad I had to suffer with a RS coco instead.
The vast majority of enterprise level corporations, and smaller companies, don't produce software that is distributed outside of the company. Below enterprise level companies an even larger percentage doesn't distribute software.
For these companies the license doesn't matter. Both licenses are equally free on the end-user. The licenses differ in what developers have to do if they distribute their works outside of a corporation.
For a corporation that does distribute software, wanting to build a standard the GPL would seem better to me. Under BSD a competitor can take your work, add to it and distribute it without releasing code -- competitive advantage to the competitor. Under GPL any changes must be available, they can't keep secret their modifications. Level playing field.
In summary, everything bad that's happened to the internet is due the BSD license. It should be outlawed at once!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Since code gets obsolete, the original BSD code will likely not be useful some years from now. Since most code requires aditional work to remain useful, and those who make that work *can* keep it closed, it's likely that the current and updated version of the code will not be openly available.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I'm the only one who misread BSoD or GPL? Nothing against BSD btw.
Ed is the one true editor.
;)
Ed is the path to nirvana! Ed has been the choice of educated and ignorant alike for centuries! Ed will not corrupt your precious bodily fluids!! Ed is the standard text editor! Ed makes the sun shine and the birds sing and the grass green!!
With apologies to rms and the FSF, from whom I stole this.
If you intend to prosecute anyone you discover using your software without making the source (or at least their changes to it) publically available, use the GPL. If you do not intend to prosecute anyone for such things, use the (advertising-clause-free) BSD license.
A license isn't worth half a wooden nickel if you won't actively defend it if necessary. Choose where you draw the line in the sand for yourself.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
For many "custom project" based software companies GPL is not even a choice. All of the projects has to e closed sourced due to the customer request, or company policy. Especially government projects are strict on this case. So, we are careful not to use any GPL library within the project distribution. But we do use GPL applications during the developement of the project. Luckily, most java libraries are not GPL, and we used nearly 20 libraries without a problem. OS product developers are also aware of that and i can say most common and successful Java open source libraries are not developed under GPL (sure there are exceptions but mostly ina pplication side, like BerkleyDB, Azureus etc.).
Why not make your own licence based on what you want to accomplish? Using someone elses licence is just laziness...
It's a tough choice, but I guess I'd go with Solaris 10.
Every license relies on copyright, without copyright it would be like everything was public domain. The BSD license still requires that you acknowledge the author of the BSD licensed code.
Actually, most companies don't care! (...) the BSD and GPL licenses are functionally equivalent.
They're functionally equivalent for now, but this is because you can develop code in-house using the GPL for your competitive advantage if you don't release them (GPL FAQ here).This is poised for change in version 3.0.
The reality of the GPL is that it is being widely deployed by companies dual-licensing. That is, they release GPLed code, often with shoddy documentation, and propose to you the alternative of opting for a proprietary licensing scheme.
My understanding of what this scheme means is that, in the end, you end up developing code for free for an enterprise that will license that code under a proprietary license. Exactly how these companies will disentangle GPL code contributions made by others and sell you a proprietary license is something I don't quite understand. Maybe there's a legal, untested, loophole. There's gotta be something, since so many software houses are doing it. Maybe the loophole is the above item of the FAQ above: the company apropriates GPL code and develops it in-house, but for a contractor.
Under the puported forthcoming changes in v 3.0, will you not be able to develop in-house code without giving back. This will push people who are clients of those software houses to two choices: either choose a pure proprietary license, no longer a twin tributary and heir of the GPL code, or the truly viral v. 3.0. You are back to square 1. But if you have the option of a truly viral license, why would you choose the proprietary one? This means both loose.
All this means the GPL is a confusing model. It lends itself to dual-licensing, something the BSD licese aborts by creation. There are no legal loopholes in the BSDL.
However, for big corporations, the reasoning is completely different. The GPL is a big thing for them, but not because of dual-licensing. By commoditizing the complements fo their products (i.e., what they really sell you is hardware , but it runs on Linux - a formulation first written by Joel Spolsky on the now-famous Strategy Letter V), they get garantees that the competitor won't simply incorporate changes. Also, it's a great scheme because it cuts down the cost of development, by getting contributions from the community. Please notice that, whenever, e,g, IBM sells software, it's under a proprietary license (e.g., WebSphere). Either that, or they sell per-seat licenses (e.g. RedHat).
For small independent software vendors, it takes away any competitive advantage you might otherwise aggregate to a client. This is a very important factor, because the BSD allows you to contribute and benefit from a free code base, and still use your software talent to your benefit. There are some real-world scenarios where the Human Factor may actually work against you (I'll come back to that bellow).
So you see, there's absolutely nothing to do with freedom when companies selling per-seat licenses and/or hardware defend the GPL. Don't believe their PR department, please.
Why do companies take BSD code and often don't give anything back. This has more to do with corporate culture. Linux is all about PR and evangelizing. The BSD people always were hackers, before everything else. They only cared about coding, maybe that was their mistake.
And finally, the last aspect I see regarding the GPL is the human factor. A very real world political one, but that's not so evident in the USA, because there's a stronger business culture there. But in my country (Brazil) the government often is the biggest contractor. I've seen the Free Software community be maneuvered by a government
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
ATi vs. nVidia
Intel vs. AMD
this entire article is flamebait.
not to mention it is a boring arguement to begin with
who gives a flying fuck what someone ELSE prefers.
You insensitive clod! GLP stands for GNU Public Licence GNU stands for GNU's not unix and just ask RMS if you dont belive me.
-schwal "Hanging is too good for punners, they should be drawn and quoted"
Since code gets obsolete, the original BSD code will likely not be useful some years from now.
Most code requires aditional work to remain useful, and those who make that work *can* keep it closed, so it's likely that the current and updated version of the code will not be openly available.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
The fundamental difference between the GPL and the BSD lincese is that:
One is from California, and the other is from Massachusetts.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
The (small) company I work with is developing an IDE and a development board for ARM. Our obvious choice for debugger is GDB, which, being GPL, cannot be linked with our code. Accordingly, I've been searching for a BSD-licensed front-end to GDB for a long time to avoid spending the months it is taking to write a class to interface between GDB, using its GDB/MI interface, and the rest of the IDE. The task involves a bison parser and several layers of code that could all be avoided if any of the components necessary were under the BSD license.
-insert a witty something-
Unless you plan to release your code, what difference does the license make?
What company, other than a software developer, releases their code?
To ACME Worldwide Widget company, they can _use_ FLOSS code under equally easily license terms.
I find the BSD License to be simpler. Surely that must be a factor making the BSD the second most popular license at SourceForge. But then again, I usually go for the simplest approach possible (but not simpler.) You might call that laziness.
XML UI Browser/Platform
This article sums up pretty well why copyleft is important over non-copyleft licenses like the BSD license.
"When it comes to defending the freedom of others, to lie down and do nothing is an act of weakness, not humility."
MOYAL - Microsoft owns your as* license.
Since I want to be able to look at any code and use it in whatever. Sure others can steal functionality, but that doesn't make the BSD product worse (just if you compare them, and any company with a little self-asteam(spelling, and also, do they exist?) should consider giving back to bsd projects aswell and just be happy that they can make a commercial project of it. See Apple.
CDDL is the license used by the solaris proyect, it doesnt kidnap yuor rights, also enables you to make fully commercial use of your work, and if you desires keep your work free. Open Solaris CDDL http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing/
First of all, while I understand that someone may want to know which license to use for their new project, a quick search of /. would have shown that this topic has been beaten to death and that roadkill has more life in it. This topic comes up again and again and again. In general, most of /. (not including myself) prefer GPL over BSD. Here's a few pros/cons about them both.... though I will try to remain impartial, I realize I may not completely succeed.
The first thing to realize is that 'free software' and 'open-source software' means different things to the BSD and GPL camps. The GPL camps see it as free/open only if it ensures that it will always remain so. The BSD cames see it as free/open only if I can do whatever the hell I want with it. As should be obvious to anyone, these two CAN be mutually exclusive in some situations.
Corporations are where the two diverge greatly. Most corporations have no problems running/modifying BSD code but refuse to even look at GPL code. This has advantages and disadvantages to both the BSD and GPL camps.
To better understand this, let's use an example. Joe Bob writes a new version of grep that is 1000 times faster. When trying to licenses his software, he realizes he has way to many options to choose from. He decides to license it either GPL or BSD -- but which one?
If he licenses it BSD, everyone (and I mean absolutely everyone -- it is 1000 times faster afterall) will use it. He probably will not make any money at all off of it, but... whenever he logs into his Unix or Windows box, doing 'grep' or 'find' or 'search from the Windows Folder' will be much faster. In fact, he would have changed the world for the better -- even though no one may know he was involved. Chances are, some people like Microsoft might make further modifications to his software, making it faster, and only Microsoft would benefit from that change. At first he could be pissed off that no one else benefits from M$ changes (until he realizes they probably broke it somehow) -- or he could be happy that Google and Windows and Unix are all faster and that his (and everyone else's lifes) are better for it.
If he licenses it GPL, many Linux hackers will use it, but rarely anyone else. Most corporations won't do it, Google won't do it, Windows won't do it. BSD and Mac OSX probably won't even do it. Linux probably would. As such, Google isn't any faster, the windows search button isn't any faster, his ISP's BSD account isn't any faster, but his Linux box is. It's possible that Windows would take it, use it, lie about it, pay someone off, etc -- but... let's just ignore GPL-violations for the moment. Joe has ensured that any modifications made to his code will be recontributed back, but at the cost of widespread usage. If he is really into Linux, perhaps that is a good solution. If his goal was to have widespread worldwide usage, on the other hand, that will never happen. In fact, he might write an article explaining the concept and how he came up with it -- at which point, others (proprietary, BSD, etc) will all re-invent the wheel and thus put him back in the position of the further contributions not coming back.
So, this may seem like a catch-22... You either have to allow people to steal your code, or you have widespread usage -- but not both. And that is the primary reason the two camps continue to disagree to this day.
What should you do? You should determine what your primary motivation is. Do you want to know how everyone modifies it? Do you want everyone to use it? Do you want to ensure that your version of it is persisted forever (perhaps Public Domain)? Your motivations for where you see your code going (and and children it might have) should be what drives your choice of license.
Malachi
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
...would Jesus use?
The BSD licence focuses on freedom for the developer. Do what you want with it -- change it, sell it, close source it.. Whatever. Once you have the source code, (if it's still free) you can do whatever you want with it.
The GPL focuses on freedom for the source code. Do whatever you want -- change it, use it sell it, whatever -- as long as people continue to have access to the source.
The problem with the GPL is that some companies may be unwilling to use GPL code in a product if it meant that they have to make their changes publicly available.
The problem with the BSD license is that, for any company that faces real competition, releasing code changes is potentially a zero-sum game. If your competition takes your BSD code, improves it and closes off the changes, they gain from your work, and you lose.
In other word, each license has a potential cost for businesses. For GPL, the cost comes when you choose to use it. For BSD, the cost comes when you look at releasing your changes back to the community.
Given these associated costs, I'm not at all surprised to see that companies like SUN are willing to use BSD code all over their own products, but unwilling to contribute back to the community -- Contribution is where BSD costs a company. Of course, this refusal to contribute back has a cost for companies, as well. It places an intrinsic limit on the vibrancy of the community that created the product that you're so happy to use. The BSD license feeds into the environment of greed, and suffers from the costs of that approach.. The irony is that it depends on a commitment to contribution for the BSD codebase to continue growing.
This is where I see that companies like IBM prefer the GPL. Using the GPL means that you can contribute back to the community that gave you your product without having to worry about your changes being hijacked by your competition. Any changes that your competition make are required to be returned to you. The GPL enforces a share-alike attitude among it's redistributors and thus allows a company to justify contributing code back into the community. This creates an environment where the code, if it is of any use to the commercial community, it is highly likely to increase in an almost viral pattern anybody who likes it enough to use it tends to contribute to it's growth (either directly or indirectly).
This, for me, is why I'm willing to contribute to BSD code, but prefer GPL licenses. The BSD license needs a culture of contribution, but the GPL creates a culture of contribution.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
BSD.
or
Linux.
Choose wisely, but choose one.
It's all about CHOICE.
Let the competition of free ideas and the outwards-facing nature of Open Source versus Closed Source be the hallmark of the debate, not the Us versus Them false debate the Dark Side of Closed Source wants to create.
It's like deciding if you're a Rebel or a Wookie. Why decide? Neither side likes the Empire.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yeah, because Darwin isn't a fork off the FreeBSD project right???
Correct. Darwin is in fact not a fork off the FreeBSD project. How very perceptive of you. Darwin is a different OS altogether, with a different kernel (Mach) and a different driver architecture. It does incorporate much of the FreeBSD userland. Apple publishes any changes they make in multiple places despite a license that does not compel such publication. Many if not most are incorporated into the upstream software.
But why do you bother to point out that Darwin is not a fork off the FreeBSD project? Is there a point you're trying to make by stating the obvious?
.sig: file not found
BSD license is better for Covalent. They sell a closed source version of Apache with little value-add. If any. If it were GPL, you'd probably realize that Covalent didn't change a single line of code and you could get everything for the price of a download.
GNOME wins. :)
I understand that some of you may only have heard of the open source movement. I'm grateful that you would consider using the GPL for your projects. However, the GNU General Public License (or GPL) predates the open source movement by many years by the founder of a movement with different goals than the open source movement. Therefore it is not fair or accurate to credit the GPL as an "open source license" merely because the Open Source Initiative (which started the open source movement) placed it on a list of approved licenses.
The GPL was written by Richard Stallman, most notably. Version 1 of the GPL was released in January 1989, and version 2 (the current version) in 1991. So, two major releases of what has come to be the most important and popular free software license were released well before the Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998. The OSI has yet to write a license that compares with the popularity or strength of the GPL.
The GPL speaks repeatedly about software freedom, not "open" anything, and for very good reasons. First, the term "open source" didn't exist when the two revisions of the GPL were written. But even if the OSI existed, the open source movement doesn't want to frame any issue in terms of software freedom because it gets in the way of addressing businesses, their chief audience. Talking about software freedom means talking about something beneficial to users, not addressing more efficient means of connecting cheap programming labor with businesses. Philosophically and historically, the FSF and OSI are not the same, nor are the free software and open source movements. Stallman and Eben Moglen, chief counsel for the FSF, confirm this in every speech they give and virtually every essay they write. The Free Software Foundation has published an essay describing the differences between the two movements and why they see the free software movement as better. To this list of differences I'd add that free software guarantees private derivatives, unlike the open source definition.
The upcoming GPL (version 3) in this regard because it will be the first version of the GPL where anyone from the OSI may have editorial say in. The final word (and framing of the issues surrounding the GPLv3) still comes down to Stallman and Eben Moglen.
Thus, with all of this history, I think it is fair to call the GPL a free software license, not an open source license. The GPL existed well before and independantly of anything to do with the open source movement and does not embody the values of the open source movement. I encourage you all to stop misleading people into giving the OSI and the open source movement an undeserved primacy.
Digital Citizen
That's exactly why the LGPL exists.
You shouldn't be copying from the headers anyways. You should be #include-ing them.
It's really not that big of a deal to make most programs dynamically linked... it's standard industry practice.
That the user can replace some libraries is actually a good thing... for example, the SDL shipped with Neverwinter Nights does not work with some recent versions of nvidia-glx, but newer versions of SDL do, so I just replaced the SDL in NWN with a symlink to my more recent SDL library. If I couldn't do this, I wouldn't be able to run the program, and I wouldn't have bought the expansion packs.
"Which is a better licensing model for open-source applications: BSD or GPL? What do you think?"
Oh, and while you're answering that one: vi or emacs? qwerty or dvorak? boxers or briefs?
Sheesh! -- See if you can stir up a fight, will ya?
Note the correlation between a company open-sourcing its codebase, and said company folding. This happens too often to be a coincidence.
"Derivative works" (the only thing they are empowered by copyright law to control with the GPL) are defined by copyright law.
Not by RMS.
Not all businesses prefer the BSD license, a rep for Novell states the case for the GPL.
FalconShould there be a Law?
IBM *did* contribute code to FreeBSD
IBM bought Whistle Communications, which built an embedded system based on FreeBSD.
Subsequent to the purchase by IBM, I, Julian Elisher, Archie Cobbs, and others at the new "IBM GSB" were permitted and encouraged to continue contributing code back to the FreeBSD project.
Interestingly, the two problems they had during due dilligence were PHK's "Beerware" license on a FreeBSD kernel file, and our use in the upcoming release of a GPL'ed project that ran in user space and violated 6 of IBM's patents. The "Beerware" issue was resolved quickly, but we were forced to rip out the GPL'ed project and replace it with an equivalent that was under a BSD license instead.
What IBM says publically about Linux, and what IBM requires in the two week course it makes it's employees take before allowing them to work with GPL'ed code, are two different things.
-- Terry
And GPL-license-using-folks can't see past the current state of affairs in the software industry, and thus assume that we actually need anything other than public domain software to begin with.
The BSD license is as close to public domain as you can legally get in this litigous society, which would not protect a public domain software author from liability for damages caused by their software.
The GPL exists because copyright on software exists, and because it depends on copyright for software, it perpetuates the idea that intellectual property protection for software - both copyright and patents - should continue to exist so that it can force source availability through license that uses copyright for enforcement.
Say we disbanded copyright for software tomorrow, but continued to permit liability disclaimers - then where would GPL be? That's right - it'd be just another BSD license.
People who add GPL to useful code prop up the existing copyright structure that RMS's "GNU Manifesto" claims to decry.
-- Terry
I'm not certain of their contribution to BSD, but I'd bet it's not as good as if BSD was GPL'd...
The question is if Apple would of used the GPL? From their point of view the BSD license offered them better terms than the GPL does as they didn't have to share anything. Unlike many companies in the computer industries, Apple is both a hardware and a software company and would have much to loose if they had to give away their software, er MacOS.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Dual licencing is a non-starter. You say:
"[...GPL code relicensing can become impossible...] That really depends on whether or not you just accept random patches, or if you're planning to license the code commercially, whether you require copyright assignment to you before applying those patches."
What this really depends on is how long you are willing to enforce this copyright assignment policy before someone forks your GPL'ed version of your product, and starts accepting the patches that you won't, without the assignment. Patches you will be unable to integrate yourself, without committing you to not commercially licensing the code yourself, in the future.
Then watch how quickly you get left in the dust with your relicense-able-but-hopelessly-out-of-date code base.
There's no room for dual licensing in code; code contributed back under the auspices of one license quickly becomes unusable under the other.
-- Terry
Banning P2P to prevent piracy is like banning grain and potatoes to prevent moonshine liquor. I tried to ignore that but I failed. Banning p2p to prevent piracy is like banning tractor-trailers and deisel fuel to prevent moonshine liquor.
[This space for rent]
Now I'm going to get flamed
It depends on what you mean by "liberal". If the meaning is Classical Liberal, as in Liberty and Freedom as was tjhe two Thomases, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, then I'm with you but if it's what passes as neoliberal, bigger government and such then nope!
FalconShould there be a Law?
This doesn't make any sense at all. Programmer A writes code for Corporation B. The code is based on a GPLed source (created by Programmer Z), so Programmer A is entitled to use it. What you don't understand is that the agreement that Programmer A works under is "work for hire" to Corporation B. This automatically assigns all copyright of the derivative work to Corporation B. Corporation B distributes it to all employees, one of whom is Employee C. As an employee, Employee C is indistinguishable from Corportation B, the copyright holder. Employee C contacts the owner of the original source, Programmer Z, who then contacts Corportation B. Corporation B explains that the code has not been distributed and Programmer Z agrees. Corporation B fires the arse off Employee C for being such a dipshit.
That situation would be entirely you and your companies own fault. If you want to use someone elses code without giving them anything back in return, you don't deserve to use it. The GPL does carry a price, and if you don't like it then you should write it from scratch yourself, or buy it from someone else.
I agree on who's fault it is, but as for writing from scratch or buying from someone else, that's where the BSD comes in. It slides right in between the two, you can use what's a benefit to you and you can modify it without having to release your code.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I agree that the BSD license only works if people are fundamentally good, but the GPL license doesn't work at all -- at least, not for any socially mature and desirable goals.
As my reply to the parent should show I agree with much of what you say but I disagree with this part. Linux is a good example of GPLed software that is "socially mature" and helps to acheive "desirable goals". There's a place for GPL, BDS, and proprietary software.
FalconShould there be a Law?
When you release it under a BSD styled licence you are pretty much saying...I just did this for fun and it's pretty much worthless.
It seems the opposite to some, under GPL you have to release your source code if you release the programm. In other words nobody has to pay you for your work, so your tyme is not valued. Because under BSD your tyme valuable, you don't have to release your code.
The GPL and GPL style licences are more strict because they are based in reality...
What reality, that people need to eat? How can they if they have to give away their code?
There's a place for BSDed, GPLed, and Proprietary software.
FalconShould there be a Law?
government often is the biggest contractor
Hopefully I'll be going to Brazil in about three years as part of a study abroad program, so I have some questions. How is the market in Brazil? What effects has Lula had on it, and how do you think he's doing? Will he be relected?
FalconShould there be a Law?
IMHO, projects under BSD license make people/companies more comfortable.
I, as well as other colleagues in my company, usually download, study, and customize the projects from Apache, such as Ant, maven, tomcat and so on. we have never concern the license issue, since we all have known projects on Apache are released under it's BSD-like license, anybody can use and change them with or without publishing their work under this license.
Meanwhile, the case when we met GPL was quite different. A few months ago, Company decided to use a open source database for internal project use. Nearly almost of colleagues proposed MySql as the favorite choice. Things were going on well until somebody studied Mysql's so-called dual-license. The folk said to us: we have to pay for it due to its license.
We argued about this issue for a long time, and with no result. Many days later, Manager talked about it in a routine meeting, then he said: "Silver, please make clear the price of MySql , and tell me; to me, if things is not certain, I will have to choose a safe way, that's it."
-- forgive me my poor Engl...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression one could sell GPL software.
You could, for example, create software, sell it at $500.00/copy, but then whoever you sold it to would have the rights to give it away, modify it, build on it and sell their work, provided they gave their customers the same freedoms.
At least, thats how I thought it worked.
Seems to me GPL is the way to go because it keeps open source "open". I don't see why an open source developer would choose anything else?
Is there anything more reduntant and pointless than yet another BSD v. GPL discussion on Slashdot ?
It's all been said before guys.
Sig out of date
It offers *zero* real protection, *especially* for *small developers* with no legal team to back them up.
One has to look no farther than the Virgin WebPlayer as an example of a 'big' company that violated the GPL, and the reaction (or lack thereof) of the copyright holders of the Linux Kernel.