Slashdot Mirror
Dispelling BSD License Misconceptions
AlanS2002 writes "Groklaw is hosting an article by Brendan Scott which looks at the misconceptions surrounding the BSD license. From the article: 'We observe that there exists a broad misconception that the BSD permits the licensing of BSD code and modifications of BSD code under closed source licenses. In this paper we put forward an argument to the effect that the terms of the BSD require BSD code and modifications to BSD code to be licensed under the terms of the BSD license. We look at some possible consequences and observe that this licensing requirement could have serious impacts on the unwary.'"
The MIT license looks like it explictly permits relicensing. Would someone more qualified in the legal art then me care to comment?
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Yeah right like anyone gives a shit about any sort of "copyright" around here - get a clue loser .
If this turns out to be true, it could have some pretty far-reaching effects, potentially damaging Microsoft, Apple, and even certain F/OSS projects. There seems to be quite the firestorm of controversy over the BSD license lately- perhaps it'd just be better to use a license that isn't so controversial- MIT if you want something to be available for use in closed-source products, or GPL if you don't.
Care about privacy? Read this!
IANAL ;-}
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
One tidbit seems to be ignored--this would only apply under AUSTRALIAN law, per the article.
But, if true, it might mean that the BSD is indeed "viral" in Australia!
Wonder what Microsoft might have to do about all that old BSD networking code they use if this is true?
This novel interpretation of the BSD license requires various syntax games with the license text that simply aren't supported by common sense interpretation. And yes, while common sense may not be the output of much of any area of law, contract law included, it's still got a lot of weight as input.
It's not a viral license, no matter how much anyone wants to twist their personal interpretation of it. All in all, it's pretty funny, telling the licensors how they actually intended a different outcome than what they, well, intended.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
...personally I'd rather declare any code I produce to belong to the Public Domain or just keep it entirely closed and private. The way law is makes anything else a headache. Seriously, if even lawyers can't agree on anything why does anyone in the Open Source community even bother? Personally I care more about other people being able to benefit from my code than preventing corporations from using it for profit.
SQLite is released to the public domain and it's some damn fine code.
They seem to be saying this:
1) The BSD license clause 3 says the FOLLOWING conditions must apply.
2) They wonder if "apply" means "apply" or something else, like "apple" or "penguin".
3) They note that one of the FOLLOWING conditions is the warranty.
4) They wonder if one of the PRECEDING conditions (clause 2) ought to be handled the same way as the the warranty.
In a narrowly construed legal sense they may have a point.
In a human being sense, if anyone has ever wondered why we all hate lawyers and think they are wankers, this is pretty much it.
It is, of course, impossible to create an unambigous document, and yet lawyers pretend to be able to do this, and then make a fortune out of their failures.
No one, ever, anywhere, has ever had any question as to what the BSD license means. So clearly there is a valid and correct reading that means what everyone knows it to mean. So clearly any reading that completely reverses that meaning must be making a mistake somewhere.
This post, by the way, can be interpreted as a love sonnet addressed to a musk ox, if you look at it closely enough and make up the meaning of a sufficiently large number of words, and wonder when I say, "it is, of course, impossible to create an unambigous document" if I really mean, "misey were the borogoves, and the momrath outrabe."
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
That's the problem with the BSD and the GPL v.x and the LGPL, it's not easily interpreted and it's not intuitive. My god, any paragraph can be interpreted in different ways, as a matter of fact, when I post my interpretation of any paragraph, there will be a bunch of other posts each with their own differing interpretation. There are also flames about how stupid I am. If I were to start any business that uses F/OSS in any development way, I will have to hire an attourney that specializes in IP law. Period. I am not a lawyer, so I am not qualified to read a contract or license. If you are not a lawyer and you think you're qualified to interpret the GPL, LGPL, or BSD, you're kidding yourself.
So they are not relicensing the BSD licensed components. They are providing those parts of the software under the license of which they were required and they are doing all they are required to use that code by providing the license in the documentation. The power of this is that the BSD license doesn't require the source code to be released to the user (and Brendan Scott, the author of the paper, recognises this in section 7.3) so the company can keep their modifications secret.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Call a spade a spade. It's not a 'novel interpretation', it's FUD.
Someone who want all software to be 'open' only in the GPL notion is trying to spread FUD that the truely free BSD license also has the same viral restrictions. Don't buy it, don't spread it. It's FUD.
To the author of this crap 'interpretation': If you want your software under GPL, then write it that way, but don't try to spread crap about the BSD license.
Personally, I think that this is just an attempt to make the BSD license somewhat equivalent to the GPL just so that people will use the GPL more. After all, we all know that the GNU Foundation has gotten really active with regards to activism:
h tml
/. (yes, I know that polls here aren't exactly accurate, but it does provide a indicator).
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/06/12/31/010221.s
And the BSD/MIT licenses are the GPL's nearest competitor according to a poll here at
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1364&aid=-1
All this is is twisted lawyers, writing twisted conclusions based on twisted sophistry. It is nonsense.
Personally I care more about other people being able to benefit from my code than preventing corporations from using it for profit.
The problem comes when a company claims "ownership" of your code and then determines who benefits and under what contitions. That's what happens when you don't worry enough to make things right.
A great example of such a theft is Macsyma(tediously detailed article that's nice but misses the point), the grand-daddy of Maple, MathCAD, Mathematica and many other symbolic algebra systems. It was developed, largely at public expense by people who expected the public to be able to have it. Instead, the results were "commercialized" in the 80's. A single copy of the original code(much better history, as you would expect from a free software project) survived thanks to the efforts of Bill Schelter, a GNU Common Lisp author and one of the first to port GCC to i386. Schelter managed to convince the DOE to let him legally distribute that code ... 20 years after it had been stolen from the public. Since then, development has been speedy and it will not be long before the quality matches or exceeds current commercial packages. The next time you spend a hundred bucks on one of it's commercial derivatives, remember that you might have had a free version a decade ago.
So, before you freely give your life's effort to others, you might consider what they will really do to other people with it and chose an explicit license that suits your real tastes. The GPL is the most common choice made and there's a reason for that. The same old assholes are up to new tricks, like "trusted computing" that are designed to lock everyone but themselves out of the market. In the future, if they have their way, you will not be able to run your code on commercial hardware. Is that the kind of thing you want to support in any way?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So suppose, Microsoft takes some BSD licensed code and incorporates it into Internet Explorer. They put in the documentation "this program contains software which is BSD licensed, here's the license", etc. Have they done all they are required to do? No. Either Internet Explorer is a modification of this BSD licensed code, in which case, it much be distributed under the BSD license.. or Internet Explorer is a derivative work of this BSD licensed code, and a derivative work is something different to a "modification" in which case it cannot be distributed *at all*.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Is re-licensing really that important?
The BSD license means that you can do what you want with the code, as long as you display the license. Plain and simple. So if you modify BSD licensed code (and compile it), the code you didn't write but used is under the BSD license (meaning you can do what you want) and you can license your own code however you want.
What the article is trying to argue is that you must include the license with the distribution, ignoring that it can be specified that different licenses can be specified for subsections of code. IANAL, but the key word in the sentence that I think they abuse is "redistributions" which I interpret to be "redistributions of the code that this license applies to" rather than "distributions of this code and other code". And I think that the word "redistributions" rather than "distributions" argues my point.
Even if their definition was the correct one, it still wouldn't matter to most (such as MS), because redistributing the source code is a choice left to the programmer.
This seems like FUD to me, not something I would expect from Groklaw.
In Australia, at least.
Seems reasonable to me.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
He doesn't even provide anything to try to back up his crazy claim, he just keeps repeating his conclusion that "you must distribute it under the BSD license" under all these circumstances. The closest thing he gets is claiming that the BSD license doesn't explicitly permit re-licensing. But copyright doesn't have anything to do with licensing, so its totally irrelivant. The BSD license grants you the copyright granted rights that normally are reserved for the author, if you obey the terms. Applying your own license terms later on has nothing to do with copyright, and hence the author of the software has no right to stop you. The GPL prevents you from using your own license not because of some magical "you can't relicense" part of copyright law, but because the GPL explicitly says you can't in the license.
I just spoke to someone I know in UC Berkeley administration about this situation and they told me the following. Please note that I am paraphrasing here and none of this is to be taken as an official statement by the University of California.
The spirit of the license is exactly as people have interpreted it. It is not intended to limit or hinder people in any way. On the contrary, it is fully intended that their products be freely used, modified, and distributed. That's what academic research is all about. Berkeley has neither the time nor energy nor desire to chase people down. They just want credit for doing the work.
In addition, most of Berkeley's projects are government-funded. As such, they are not generally permitted to make any profit from the work. It has to be made public and people have to be allowed to extend it for their own purposes. The essence of public research is to benefit society as a whole, not just the corporate sector.
As for the question of third-party derivative works being used to make a profit, there is nothing stated in the license to prohibit such acts. Thus, it would seem to be legal. However, it could be argued that doing so is against the spirit of the license. Whether or not Berkeley could enforce that spirit in a court of law (assuming they even care to do so) is another matter.
If anybody wants an official statement, they should contact Berkeley's legal department.
It's neither. The issue is that the BSD licence must remain in modified BSD code even if not released - no one argues about that, do they?. If someone then "steals" the code and puts it on Usenet, is there any legal recourse to preventing that code from being redistributed? Simple answer is: no. The BSD licence that is in the code allows anyone to distribute it regardless of how they got it, so long as the BSD conditions are met, which is easy.
The BSD license is viral and made so by the requirement that its conditions are copied into modified versions. Which was hardly a secret, now, was it? What's the fud/novel interpretation?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Look, when I release software under a BSD-like license, my intent as the owner of the work is to do the following:
(1) Permit people to do whatever they want with the software--including relicensing the software, so long as
(2) if you use my software, you don't then plaster my name all over it as if I endorce whatever cause or crappy software you're creating, and
(3) you don't sue my ass if and when the software you downloaded from me breaks.
Basically, do what you want--just leave me out of it.
In one sense the article is correct: in imposing a new license you cannot remove the old one. But as the intent of the old license is to cover my ass and keep my name around so people know what sort of a cool dude I am, so long as the new license also covers my ass and keeps my name around so people know what sort of a cool dude I am, I don't see the problem--either from a common-sense perspective or from a legal one.
Somehow, I have more faith in Berkley's lawyer's interpretation of US Copyright Law than a random article's flaky conclusions.
If you would bother to read the FUD article, the author puts for that modieied BSD code may not be relicensed under other licenses. That's the FUD interpretation.
Including an attribution/disclaimer is NOT viral under the generally held meaning of viral. All changes don't have to be given back to the community. That's the viral bit that some folks complain about. Please point me to a reference, other than this FUD author, which complains that an attribution/disclaimer is 'viral' in any sense.
> Call a spade a spade. It's not a 'novel interpretation', it's FUD.
And it's something a lawyer could present to the court in Australia. And that court might believe them.
Now, you can piss and moan all you want about how it's wrong according to common sense, but can you please tell me exactly *when* courts have operated according to common sense in modern times? Perhaps when they thought that posting a URL was the same as copying a work? Or perhaps when tomatoes became vegetables, even though botanists know they're actually fruit?
Perhaps you don't think that good lawyers can get very far on nothing but a crazy, distorted legal argument, like SCO vs. IBM that's only on, what, the third year now? Even though any normal person would've dismissed it as stuff and nonsense (but mostly the latter) after about 5 minutes.
You can cry "FUD!" until you're blue in the face, but it's moot unless the courts agree with you. Perhaps the BSD license could use some fixing?
I agree 100% with you, and I would like to add that even if it were "viral" it may not be considered permanently "viral", the offending code could probably be removed, followed by a "re-licensing" of your own code.
Then you are battling copyright law vs. a twisted and weakly worded contract. I'll bet on copyright law.
And to even get to my argument, the law would have to recognize the article's point. Which isn't very likely!
IANAL of course.
The whole reason programming languages exist is because we understand our everyday languages are not defined well enough. By creating a language that is fixed and closed to interpretation we save ourselves a lot of headaches. If we are confused what code Does, we just run it. argument over. If you want a comparison of nerds who like language, I would have thought you'd have mentioned Larry wall inventor of perl and a linguist. Considering the author's skill set, I think the legibility of perl code is no coincidence.
Since the code is still marked with the BSD license, and the BSD license is a copyright license, you can treat any code with the BSD license text on it as if it were licensed *solely* under the BSD license by simply ignoring any other license - you have permission to treat it as BSD licensed code, so the other license doesn't matter - it's not letting you do anything new.
The only question is: If the BSD license text is distributed with a program, does it apply to the whole program?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
It seems that this lawyer has not been trained in computer science because he is glossing over an important detail of the license to reach his incorrect conclusion. The BSD license says (using the author's numbering and my emphasis):
"2 Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
3 * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
4 * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
5 * Neither the name of the [organization] nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission."
The license requires, per clauses 2-4, that a user reproduce (a) the copyright notice, (b) the list of conditions and (c) the disclaimer of the original license. The author reads this as requiring that the entire BSD license be reproduced in any redistrubtion or use of the code. But this is only true if (a), (b) and (c) comprise the entirety of the BSD license. I argue that they do not!
The key question is, "What is the 'list of conditions' that must be reproduced?" The author incorrectly claims that [2] is part of the list of conditions that must be maintained by a user, which would create a viral mechanism that this paper describes.
It is obvious from [2]'s use of the phrase "the following conditions" and the fact that [3, 4, 5] are preceded by asterisks and use the phrase "this list of conditions" that [2] is not intended to be part of the list of conditions. The list of conditions only consists of [3, 4, 5]. Therefore, redistributors / users are not required to maintain the original grant of the license [2] in their use or redistribution of the code.
The flaw in the author's argument is that he is incorrectly including the original grant of the license [2] into the list of conditions [3, 4, 5]. The license truly only requires that users reproduce clauses [1, 3, 4, 5, 6] of the BSD license in their redistrubtions or use.
Let's take a look:
So long as you include the disclaimer as required, and you don't use the author's name in vain, you can do as you like.There is no part of the license that says that you cannot distribute modified forms under more restrictive licensing, provided that you also perform the acts required by the BSD license and require the same of any sub-licensees that distribute. There is no part of the license that says that you cannot distirbute UNmodified forms under more restrictive licensing, but presumably anyone receiving a copy from you under more restrictive licensing could figure out that you obtained it from a source that merely required adherence to the BSD license, throw away the copy you provided and get their own.
In general, acts that are not specified as prohibited in a contract (in this case the license is a contractural term. You are agreeing to abide by the license in return for being provided value in the form of the code covered by the license) are permitted (modulo exceptions that aren't worthy of mention here). Since sublicensing is not mentioned, it is permitted - provided the original conditions are always met by anyone redistributing and/or using the code.
This is a very serious issue, not because there's any validity to what is being claimed here, but precisely because likely there isn't. BSD-style licenses are incredibly useful and provide a good, solid, simple alternative to the GPL. The common interpretation clearly matches the intended spirit of the license.
FUD like this, and this is the first time I'm even using that acronym, is dangerous and puts the work of thousands of people at risk. This should be shouted down immediately, even if there is any shred of validity to it, which I doubt there is.
Um, no, it's not quite that cut and dried.
*If* the author of any new code using parts of BSD code in it decides to release code rather than just a binary, it is their responsibility to indicate that *parts* of the code fall under the BSD license and include the attribution/disclaimer accordingly. It is also their responsibility to state any more restrictive license they care to use for the code. You must abide by their license and can't ignore it simply because BSD code is included. I don't think you will find a court that agrees with you that you can ignore parts you don't like. You are free to try of course, it's your lawyer bill.
The only question is: If the BSD license text is distributed with a program, does it apply to the whole program?
There will likely be a license the program is presented to you as licensed under. There will also be a file indicating some code is contained inside with the BSD attribution/disclaimer. The software author should make it clear that this is for only part of the code. Once again, I don't think there is any legitimate question of the BSD license applying to a program licensed under another license, but you are free to waste the courts time and pay a lawyer a lot of money for nothing if you want.
Actually, making BSD license be more like GPL in this sense wouldn't be "viral" like the GPL is. The nice thing about BSD is that using a few of their routines does not make the reset of the source code BSD. 10 lines in 100MB of source code can result in either 10 lines of BSD licensed code, or 100MB of GPL licensed code. It's contrary to the principles of open source to require everyone who isn't a friend to do their own implementations from scratch.
The idea of "sharing source code" is exemplified when I can take the BSD version of the internationalization library and use it in my embedded system. That library was "reinvented" from the GPL version instead of being a port. If there had only been the GPL version, I would have been required to reinvent the library since the FSF will not "share" this code with me without irreconcilable restrictions. I also get to use a BSD licensed C run time library to go with GCC, rather than have to write my own from scratch.
I am not a "software horder". I have no problems at all showing the source code that I write to others. But other software linked into the system involves trade secrets, and there are laws and regulations that forbid the end user from modifying the software (for health and safety reasons, etc).
He's half right. You cannot take my BSD licensed software and relicense it under the GPL. However, you are perfectly free to create your own derivative work and license it under the GPL. The differences between the two are slight, but they are there. You cannot take my software and file off the BSD license. But you are able to fork off my software and license that any way you want. But in order to do the latter, it has to be a derivative work and not a mere copy. IFAIK, mere translation via compilation doesn't count either.
It's funny how some GPL advocates seem obsessed on relicensing your code under the GPL. It's like telling them everything in the fridge is free for them to eat, except for the sandwich you made for tomorrow's lunch. Then you find out the next morning that the only thing they ate was the sandwich.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The only way this will be tested is if someone who has released source code under the BSD license files suit against someone who is redistributing it under other terms. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. Until then, it's just speculation...
Support SETI@home
Since this is contrary to the established tradition, it seems like the *BSD teams would just modify the license to pull it back in line, and retroactively re-license all the releases. Most other people who used the BSD license would probably do likewise. FWIW, I tend to keep the code separate for sanity's sake anyway, and use it like LGPL. I've never found a bug in something and not given it back to the community--that'd just be silly. In other words, it's a tempest in a teapot, nothing to see here, move along, etc...
the MIT license states:
If you read carefully, you will see that the BSD license requires the disclaimer following the conditions to be included redistributions of the software, but the MIT license imposes no such requirement! And here I was thinking the MIT license and the (revised) BSD license were equivalent!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
True, but the BSD license goes further than the disclaimer and attribution: "Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.". That's the viral bit. Viral has nothing to do with giving back to the community, it is simply a question of whether the license can be removed by someone that modifies the code. BSD can't be. End of story. The interesting question here is what the implications are IF the code does find its way into "the community". What effect does that have on any copyright claims?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
First of all, what exactly do you mean by "the community"???
If you mean GPL code, the same thing that happens if the GPL folks swiped code from Microsoft, Apple, or any other source. The original authors could sue. Since inclusion of the attribution/disclaimer is not an onerous burden, anyone sensible would include it. Someone stealing code and publishing it in some 'community' does nothing to destroy the original copyright. It can still be enforced.
Oh, and as I asked before, and you neglected to answer, please point out any source other than yourself and the FUD author which considers the BSD license to be 'viral' by any standard definition of the word. No sources? Thought not. You and the FUD author are twisting of the standard meaning of viral licensing.
So if I find a piece of code with written on top : "This is the list of requirements you must meet to distribute this (and you can ignore the rest)"
I am not able to ignore the rest ?
Because that's pretty much what the BSD license says.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
As far as I can tell, the author is arguing that the BSDL is equivalent to a watered down form of the LGPL, without the requirement that the source be distributed with the binary.
Why is that a big deal?
I hate to reply to an AC, but here goes: neither of the posts you quoted were trolls or flamebait. What are you smoking exactly?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The BSD license isn't viral, don't get confused. It is the viral nature of the GPL that restricts how you can license your additions.
If you take and modify a piece of GPLed code (that you did not write in the first place), and you wish to distribute or sell the resulting source and/or binaries, you are required under the GPL to basically licence your additions under the same terms, including making your modifications available in source form. The only way around the requirement is if you contact all the authors that created the original work and get permission from all of them to operate on the source under a different license (that is, for the original authors to re-issue the same source to you under a different license). This is nearly impossible for very large GPLed projects but, of course, very easy for small projects since there are only a handful of original authors. Some projects require that submissions sign over their rights to the project to give the project the ability to change the license it is distributed under (I believe the GCC project does this, for example, and MySQL forked off a proprietary dist using the same method). Baring this permission you can only modify the code under the terms of the license.
If you take and modify a piece of BSD code you are NOT required under the BSD licence to put your additions under the same terms. You can do whatever you want with your derived work, including selling it without disclosing your modifications. All the BSD license does is prevent you from removing the BSD copyright and licensing lines from the source code, and requires you to identify in documentation that your code was derived from BSD. In particular, this means that you can add whatever conditions you like to the combined (derivative) work, as long as they are not contrary to the original BSD license. That is, you cannot remove the requirement that your documentation contain a copy of the BSD copyright notice and licence. But it certainly does not in any way require that that be the ONLY copyright notice and license pertaining to the derived work.
Any third party is welcome to take the original BSD code and do whatever they want to it under only the terms of the BSD license. But if they want to take your modified work they have to adhere to both the BSD license and your own.
Only an idiot would think otherwise. I swear, where these people get their ideas is beyond me.
It's that simple. Think of the BSD license simply as published pure science... that is the closest parallel to its intent.
-Matt
IANAL, but one thing I think everyone is forgetting here is that only parties with standing can sue in this instance. Basically, even if the perverted logic of this interpretation has legal merit (which as a non-lawyer I stand moot on) you have to be the damaged party in order to sue. ie, the original copyright holder. Since it's pretty clear that the original copyright holders thought they were liscencing code that could be reproduced in closed source form, it is highly unlikely that anyone with standing would ever sue.
The BSD license has been around for ages and speaks for itself. This isn't about the BSD license. It's about unemployed lawyers and shortsighted GNU/Linux zealots who are afraid of even friendly competition, like a certain crummy software company in Redmond.
I was thinking the same as jschultz410 that the word "following" is the critical word. Mod parent up.
Please, PLEASE go read this. Summarized, licenses are all about copyright, and you can not ever relicense work for which you are not the copyright owner, i.e. the actual author. Licenses are merely grants which allow you to do a subset of things you are otherwise forbidden to do by copyright law, and similarly the BSD license grants you a subset of these, obviously not including the right to apply different license terms at your whim. Work that is released under the BSD license therefore stays under the BSD license, unless the author explicitly gives out a different license for the work as well. And remember, if you make changes to the work, you own only the changes, obviously you don't suddenly own the complete work! What the GPL license merely says is that in order to remain in compliance with the license, you must GPL-license any changes you make as well.
Contracts are invalid if they restrict your rights you would normally have. The old example used for this is- You can contract yourself all the way into full bondage, but it isn't legal at all. In other words, no private contract can trump a basic law, and a lot of NDAs aren't worth spit, but people still sign them. And I guarantee you federal copyright law trumps any private NDA.
That's why a lot of the EULAs out there are chunks of trash as well, they only exist because people don't understand them, don't care about it, or can't afford to deal with it the way the "just-us" system is set up for the rich dudes.
If people would just learn some basic truthiness, start with this-YOU as a private individual-as a legal citizen- have more bonafide born with inviolate "rights" then do corporations or governments. Now corporations and governments can be full of power mad idjits who use their positions of power and ersatz authority over their "inferiors" to try and bully and bluff you into submission-but then, that is this mass collective "your" problem for putting up with it and living with them as your lords and "superiors".
Did you even read that link? Copyright DOES NOT reserve any magical "licensing" right for the author. You are reserved the rights to copy, modify, distribute, publicly display, etc your work. Licensing is simply the process of saying "I give you the following rights which copyright would otherwise reserve for me, if you obey the following conditions". Licenses themselves have nothing to do with copyright and are used in all sorts of manner. One manner just happens to be the transfer of previously exclusively held copyrights.
If you give me permission to modify, copy and distribute your work so long as I keep a small copyright notice intact, than that's exactly what I can do. I can redistribute your work, and I can say "you must be left handed to copy this" if I want to.
If you need the Slashdork moderation system to tell you something sucks you have some real issues.
This article pertains to Slashdot only...
The viral aspect comes from the fact that the BSD license says that you have to include the license with the redistribution of modified code. This implies that the modified code must be BSD licensed, hence, it is "infected" by the "BSD Virus". The license applies to source and binary distribution, ergo any binary that includes BSD code should be licensed according to the BSD license, especially under Australian copyright law which treats compiling source as equivalent to modifying soure and distributing.
So, under your interesting interpretation, all GPL code that contains code that was originally BSD-licensed cannot be distributed anymore because it violates the GPL. Better tell the FSF.
> Someone who want all software to be 'open' only in the GPL notion is trying to spread FUD that the truly free BSD license also has the same viral restrictions. Don't buy it, don't spread it. It's FUD.
That's not what the article said. You made all that up because you didn't want to hear it. They said that the BSD license could have problems under Australian law. It wasn't exactly written with that venue in mind, you know. Isn't this sort of like someone finding an arcane security hole, then the fanboys jump in and say "Oh! It's just FUD!" Yeah. Right.
Well, licenses have the same sort of problems. And because the laws change around them, they do sometimes need 'patches'. They're interpreted by lawyers and judges, not normal folks. Just because you're unaware of legal arcana, that doesn't mean it won't bite you in the ass. But if you prefer, do nothing. Shoot the messenger. Just don't be out there posting about how stupid it is if someone manages to abuse the license as described, because you had ample warning on this one.
Yeah. Either this guy has some strange understanding of contract law, or Australia as a whole does.
For a contract to be valid, both parties have to understand it and voluntarily agree to it. The "understand it" bit is important -- a contract where the two parties aren't actually agreeing to the same thing (due to a partial or complete misunderstanding) is not necessarily valid.
Up to the point where there is a dispute over understanding, the subjective interpretation of the contract is what the court will take into account. If the meaning is disputed, the court will attempt to determine an objective interpretation according to the "reasonable man" hypothesis.
I'm pretty sure that I know what a "reasonable man" would understand on reading the BSD license. And it's not some weird grammatical corner-case that the article tries to imply.
In civil litigation it is the court's job to resolve problems, not to play Game Master as screw the players by using a selective interpretation of wording. The intentions of the parties are important in the court's consideration. For example, if project X releases source code under the BSD license and says in a FAQ on it's web page "you can do pretty much what you like, even use this in commercial software", then the judgement is going to be pretty much straightforward.
In fact, giving the "common wisdom" about the BSD license, a copyright holder who releases a work under the BSD license will have some trouble proving to the court how they misunderstood the license and released their stuff under it and now want to sue someone ...
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
I was quoting your use of the word. I assumed you meant anyone other than the author and the person who modified the code.
If you mean GPL code, the same thing that happens if the GPL folks swiped code from Microsoft, Apple, or any other source. The original authors could sue.
Duh.
Since inclusion of the attribution/disclaimer is not an onerous burden, anyone sensible would include it.
The BSD license REQUIRES the inclusion, otherwise the modifier of that code has broken the license agreement regardless of whether the modifications are distributed or not.
Someone stealing code and publishing it in some 'community' does nothing to destroy the original copyright.
But "original" in this case is the person who wrote the code and first attached the BSD license to it. That license specifically says that if you have the source code and include all the BSD required text then you have the right to copy the code and any modifications that have occured to it. There is no requirement to pay any attention to later authors' attempts to add further restrictions; authors after the first one have no right under the BSDL to prevent you distributing their modifications to that code if you obey the BDSL's requirements. The language in the license is very clear on that.
There may be scope by secondary authors for a "trade secrets" action, but not copyright.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Any license which requires a later author to include the conditions of that license in their own source is viral. You can not modify BDSL code and in the process remove the BSDL requirements. That's a viral license: one that binds all later users of the code even if they modify the code. Modified BSDL code is allowed only if the result is also BSDL:
Note the "provided".TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
They should have licensed their work as this:
What's the standard definition of "viral"? You BSD freaks use it all the time when slamming the GPL, and yet it is not... by any sensible and reasonable definition of the word... viral.
It does not infect anything, and it does not spread itself. You choose to use the GPL for your code, and you choose to use other's GPLed code.
Don't put words into my mouth; I was only paraphrasing the article. I don't know if the BSD license requires these terms, but it's not totally impossible that it does. But I suspect that the BSD code would still be GPL compliant since the major difference would (in that case) appear to be that GPL requires that you distribute source while BSD does not. But who knows? Maybe the two licenses ARE incompatible.
This the one and only one rebuttal that is not bogus (and not rude).
It is short and clear.
The interesting question here is what the implications are IF the code does find its way into "the community". What effect does that have on any copyright claims?
A simple case of theft of intellectual property.
Jail time and huge, huge costs, if you mess with corporate America, probably.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
It's simple, buddy: you can take BSD code, and close it. You do not have to share your changes. You must retain the BSD clause, to say that you have BSD code. If you add proprietary code to BSD code, it won't be contaminated. If you ship your BSD code on the wire for an offshore company under an NDA agreement, you won't violate the license (like you would under the GPL case).
1 8909527873&w=2
/. mentioning the article as "proof" of the superiority of the GPL.
All you have to do is acknowledge that you have BSD code in your code.
Or as Theo de Raadt puts it:
software which OpenBSD [BSD licensed code] uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they
people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including
modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching
machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia.
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=991
That is the spirit.
All that will come out of this is that Mr. Dickhead, the lawyer, will have his article being mentioned on Wikipedia, described as a "controversy." Which is bad enough, because we will have to bear FSF zealots and Linux fanboys here at
Lawyers, please keep your paws off the BSD license. Go play "I can misinterpret anything I read" at the FSF.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Funny how the fuckers just add noise, isn't it?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Why? It says right there in the code in black and white that you have permission to distribute it. If you didn't steal it (which is trade secrets, not copyright), what've you got to worry about?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I'm glad Australia is isolated down under and surrounded by sea water.
That way the viral interpretation of the BSD license can stay there.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
A real case of Microsoft using BSD-licensed code. The code in question is the Message Passing Interface "a library specification for message passing proposed as a standard by a broad-based committee of vendors, implementers and users."
s p
Asked by eWEEK what Microsoft will give back to the open-source community for the MPI component, which is licensed under the BSD and not the GNU General Public License (GPL), Faenov said all fixes will be given back, while "we'll probably give the changes back as well."
Microsoft has also learned a lot about what is required for a software company to include an open-source technology component in its product, from ascertaining who has contributed that code to being able to make sure that all the licenses and permissions are in place, he said.
My money is on the Microsoft lawyers, instead of Groklaw's Mr. Dickhead, THE LAWYER.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1859439,00.a
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
It's not an interpretation; it's IN THE LICENSE in black and white. How much clearer does it need to be? I don't understand why you are so scared of this that you need to pretend that you can't read simple English. The only thing new about this article is the question of what happens if there is a leak of previously unreleased BSD licensed code. BSDL has always been viral and intentionally so. If it wasn't then the question of people removing the copyright notices from modified code would never be an issue, but it has many times. So what?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
You can always use the WTFPL if you want to!