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Open-source Licensing: BSD or GPL?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the six-on-one-hand dept.

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?"

2 of 631 comments (clear)

  1. All depends on what you want. by jon787 · · Score: 5, Informative


    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).
  2. My experiences of an open source project release by alanw · · Score: 5, Informative

    Around Y2K, I worked for a company called Cyrano.com. It produced testing
    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 .org domains set up. The project is still running, 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.