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?"

Comments

Re:All depends on what you want.

[Sheepdot]

The GPL is one of the most exciting, innovative capitalist tools ever created.

I would imagine RMS might actually take offense to the GPL being labeled as "capitalist". Your definition of the GPL being accurate, and RMS's personal comments, would lead me to believe he's anything but "capitalist".

Re:Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

[FooBarWidget]

He does have the right to complain. Slashdotters are whining all the time about how BSD is freeer than the GPL and how everything must be BSD. If you don't BSD your software, the Slashdotters will flame you down.

Re:Better question yet

[drsquare]

I'd divide the flamefests into two categories. The first are the crap flamewars, that don't really matter. With the second category, flamewars actually have some meat to them.

The first category:

• Emacs vs. vi: Just a matter of key-combinations and other fluff, doesn't make a real solid difference, they both let you write code. No-one really takes such flamewars seriously.
  
• KDE vs Gnome: Just a matter of which icon is in which place and which is more/less bloated, in the end it's just fluff, not functionality. The only people who take part in flamewars like this are people obsessed with transparent windows who don't actually produce anything worthwhile (other than themes...)
  
• Microsoft vs SCO: It's not a flamewar when no-one supports either side.
  
• PHP vs Ruby on Rails: I don't know what either of those are.
  
• Python vs. Perl: Again, just fluff. They do the same thing, only one doesn't have a braindead forced-whitespace system.
  

The second category:

• BSD licence vs GPL: Can affect the way your entire organisation runs. Using the GPL can mean the lawyers coming round and closing your business. This makes it unviable for anything more serious than home servers made to control your wi-fi toaster.
  
• Linux vs BSD: Again, completely different things. For example Linux is an amateur toy, whereas OpenBSD is a secure, efficient professional operating system. Notice how on netcraft the top servers all run BSD, not Linux.
  
• C++ vs Java: Two completely different things. Notice how Java programmes take ten weeks to open, and then they're ugly and slow? And its main feature (being cross-platform) doesn't actually work. You may as well use C++.
  
• Linux vs Windows: This always causes fireworks. Mainly ignited from the heat given out by rabid Linux zealots foaming and the mouth whilst sparks fly out of their ears when someone points out that Linux is a disorganised mess of ugly, bloated interfaces, hacked libraries and poor imitations of commercial software.
  
• Latex vs Word. This might provide a good flamewar once Word manages to cope with more than 6 pages without choking. And when two-word documents aren't 150kB. And when they don't contain viruses.
  
• Ip4 vs Ip6: Usually ends pretty quickly when someone points out to the Ip4 zealot who says that NAT is acceptable and there are enough addresses that he's a hypocrite because he has his own IP address and won't accept NAT himself, but wants everyone else to. However whilst it lasts it's a good flamewar when you compare Ip4 to horseless carriages and mention the 'No-one will ever need more than 640k' analogy.