NetBSD Moves To a 2-Clause BSD License

jschauma writes "Alistair Crooks, president of the NetBSD Foundation, announced recently that it 'has changed its recommended license to be a 2-clause BSD license.' This makes NetBSD even more easily available to a number of organizations and individuals who may have been put off by the advertising or endorsement clauses. See Alistair's email and NetBSD's licensing information for more details."

Comments

BSD is dying.

[suck_burners_rice]

Clear, irrefutable proof that BSD is dying.

Re:BSD is dying.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how you consider one BSD *ALL* BSD's...

Re:BSD is dying.

[BobNET]

Clear, irrefutable proof that BSD is dying.

I know, it seems like only nine years ago it was a four-clause license, now all three major BSDs have gone to two-clause licenses. Within a decade it'll be a zero-clause license and BSD will finally die...

Re:BSD is dying.

[devinteske]

Clear, irrefutable proof that trolls never die. Fixed that for you. Mod parent -1 (troll). It is apparent that your guilty-pleasure is to present your secret desires as unfounded facts. I think we all know that every-time news is posted about *BSD, there's at least one troll that simply must fling forth some flame-bait claiming that BSD is dying. Define "dying".

Re:BSD is dying.

[VGPowerlord]

Well... Netcraft has to confirm it.

That seems to be the only criteria.

Re:BSD is dying.

[Gewalt]

BSD is not dying permanently, its just going through a rebirth cycle. Recently, it was reborn as a mac.

Re:BSD is dying.

[suck_burners_rice]

I like how you took my obviously un-serious comment so seriously!

Re:BSD is dying.

[Drinking Bleach]

Actually, if you notice, OpenBSD already has a zero-clause license :)

Re:BSD is dying.

[Anonymous Coward]

And then the GPL v8 will have a new clause to own all your daughters.
OpenBSD FTW

Re:BSD is dying.

[jcgf]

That joke is not funny. Fuck off.

Re:BSD is dying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget to have your Weetabix this morning, then?

Re:BSD is dying.

[RiotingPacifist]

That joke is not funny. Fuck off

Re:BSD is dying.

[RiotingPacifist]

Funny how BSD is becoming less restrictive and GPL is becoming more so.

I realise that that is your point, but im allowed to steal it without giving credit now.

Re:BSD is dying.

[Skrapion]

You mean the ISC License? Well, I appreciate that it's concise, but there's still one clause in there, even though there's no bulleted points. (And that one clause is still equivalent to the two-clause BSD license.)

Re:BSD is dying.

[TheRaven64]

Only if he put it in the public domain. If his point were BSDL, ISCL or MITL then you have to give credit for it, but you can do whatever you want with it apart from claim it's your point.

Re:BSD is dying.

[Drinking Bleach]

Yeah, I knew someone would come back with that technicality before I even typed the message, but it was in humour, thus the smiley face.

Re:BSD is dying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Die? Not in the way you imagine. If it became a zero-clause license, that means the pimpled Linux hackers would proceed to gut much of their kernel code and paste in BSD (whoops, I meant "Beerware") code, without attribution, in true Linux kiddie form.

Re:BSD is dying.

[Brandybuck]

There are two reasons why BSD software will never be public domain. First, it's legally impractical to place something into the public domain. Everything is automatically copyrighted upon creation, but you need a lawyer to actually relinquish that copyright. Second, without a copyright you have nothing to hang a warrantly disclaimer on. The danger is not that someone can file off your name and pretend it is their own, but rather that they can distribute it without your disclaimer.

Will

[Anonymous Coward]

or proof of the will to live and the flexibility of some FOSS projects...

Just now?

[geminidomino]

Didn't FreeBSD do this years ago?

Re:Just now?

[Anonymous Coward]

NetBSD didn't like the idea of it's code being GPLed and GNUified, so they cept the clause to prevent retarded FSF fans from rebranding their stuff. Nothing complecated or anything.

Re:Just now?

[X0563511]

So? This isn't FreeBSD.

Ignored?

[debatem1]

+ we have seen some instances where clause 3 was ignored by groups and organisations Interesting take on it. Would that more folks saw common ground above license lawyering.

Re:Ignored?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the difference between that attitude and public domain?

Except, probably having copyright, I don't see any thing...

Re:Ignored?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

Re:Ignored?

[debatem1]

Just saying that there should be some room for common sense and common ground in licensing. Licenses should exist to protect authors and end users, not to crucify the community on some eggheaded notion of total enforcement.

Re:Ignored?

[Brandybuck]

Now if this were GPL software, lawsuits would be flying already! Obviously NetBSD has a rather radical definition of freedom, one that has not been approved by our moral arbiters at GNU.

Re:Ignored?

[debatem1]

'cause license infighting is TOTALLY better than license lawyering...

Again?

[Cro Magnon]

I thought they did that a day or two ago. I smell dupe!

Re:Again?

[chill]

Nobody paid attention the first time. They're going to keep doing it until someone notices.

Re:Again?

[neokushan]

Notices what?

This ensures that BSD will never die

[Anonymous Coward]

See, nine years ago, the BSD license was 4 clause. Now all of the BSDs have the 2 clause license. Nine years from now they will all have a one clause license. And nine years after that they will all have a 0.5 clause license, and so on.

Every nine years, they will reduce the clauses by half, ensuring that it will never go to zero. This ensures that BSD cannot die.

"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Anonymous Coward]

"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept."

Um. The BSD clause is about as "neutered" as you can get.

Read up on what a copyleft is. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/

In fact, if you still think the BSD is a "good license", read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html - and consider how many companies that work with BSD licensed software you evangelize today (Apple?) would *LOVE* it being the Bad Old Days of the '80s when a compiler was a $400 add-on product.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[profplump]

It's not clear to me how GPL licensing creates free compilers but BSD licensing creates $400 compilers. If some company takes a $0, BSD-licensed compiler, changes two lines of code, and re-sells it under a non-BSD license with no improvements for $400, why would I pay them for it rather than use the $0 original?

If the reseller makes improvements, isn't it reasonable to be able to choose between the lesser, $0 version and the better, $400 version? And what's to stop me from reverse-engineering their improvements, applying those changes to the $0 BSD version, and releasing the updated version under a BSD license?

If you want to force your code to remain open-source, and/or don't want people to be able to integrate your code with non-open-source code, you're absolutely welcome to do so, and the GPL is a great choice. But let's not pretend that having a company re-publish your BSD code under another license somehow removes the utility, availability or openness of the original code.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a good rebuttal to this in the FSF essay linked by the comment you're responding to: GCC didn't support C++. Another company implemented a C++ compiler using GCC as a code base, and despite having never released F/OSS before, they were forced to release their C++ compiler under the GPL. Had GCC been BSD-licensed, there would be no C++ compiler for GNU.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Kjella]

If the reseller makes improvements, isn't it reasonable to be able to choose between the lesser, $0 version and the better, $400 version? The assumption is that you have the $0 choice. What if say Nintendo offered signed code for the Wii? No competition. When it if came bundled with hardware? No competition. Reality though, it's more often you have a $100 dollar software version X, you add $0 dollars of open source and get $120 dollars of software version X+1. You can't replace it with version X + your BSD tool because they don't speak to each other, only the combined source does. It's not $20 of improvements, it's $20 of profits. As long as they're not in direct competition, it's basicly a free lunch.

And what's to stop me from reverse-engineering their improvements, applying those changes to the $0 BSD version, and releasing the updated version under a BSD license? Nothing but time and money. Quite likely the one making $400/copy is making some money off it allowing him to work on it, while you're on a $0 quest for BSD glory but don't let that stop you.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Xtifr]

One word: Motif. The mess caused by that is what finally convinced me that the GPL was a justifiable and justified option.

Motif probably set Unix development back by a decade, and was, I suspect, a not-inconsiderable factor in Microsoft's ability to penetrate the server room. And it was, at the time, a better option than the other choices (like OpenLook).

Of course, Motif was eventually both reverse-engineered (Lesstif) and engineered around (GTK/Qt), but it was a major obstacle and major headache for far longer than it should have been.

For whatever reasons, the (L)GPL seems to do far more to discourage forking than the BSD or MIT licenses. To anyone who remembers the Unix wars of the eighties, that's definitely a Good Thing(tm).

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Deagol]

Motif? What place would a set of GUI widgets have in the "server room" (as you state)?

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[flnca]

How so?? AIX and Solaris both had (and have) Motif implementations (and CDE) that could (can) be used for application development. For Linux, there've been (and probably still are) commercially available versions (BTW, Qt is still a commercial widget set; why aren't you upset about that?).

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[flnca]

Writing compilers is so hard! *sniffle*

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[MichaelSmith]

Motif? What place would a set of GUI widgets have in the "server room" (as you state)? Windows in the server room is administered with GUI tools. The non availability of unix GUI tools is one reason to use windows.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Chemisor]

> In fact, if you still think the BSD is a "good license", read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

Not everyone agrees with GNU's communist philosophy. Personally, I release all my open source code under the MIT license (which is what this new 2-clause BSD license really is), and would not even consider contributing anything to a GPL project. If you got out more, you might have met some people who disagree with you like I do.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Rutulian]

Wait...are you trying to claim that somehow the GPL is a communist license and the BSD license is not?

Care to share why you would "not even consider contributing anything to a GPL project?" Just curious.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[rakslice]

Since the network-transparent design of X meant that, for years, everyone who had an X-capable workstation did run all the widgets in the server room, I'll just dispense with your question and ask the implied one: How do widgets sell servers?

Ease of use is part of it, at least for some people. But the real answer is that widgets sell workstations and desktops, and workstations and desktops along with poor interoperability between vendors sell servers.

In this era of free Windows file server software for Unix and bundled TCP/IP and free X for Windows, it's easy to forget what it was like in the not too distant past.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Qt is Free Software (under the GPL, v2 or v3 at your option). There's also a commercial edition available, but that's not what the average GNU/Linux user uses. OpenMotif is NOT Free Software (nor Open Source, despite its name).

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it funny that he wouldn't contribute anything to a GPL project; but anything he contributes to a BSD project can be included in a GPL project.

Some people need to put the Ayn Rand down and think for a minute.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can't simply remove the license.
Only if you add value, and I'm not shure if two lines of code qualify as that.
Reselling without releasing Code is completely fine.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[uuxququex]

Had GCC been BSD-licensed, there would be no C++ compiler for GNU.

You say that as if it would be a bad thing!

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[TheRaven64]

It's not hard to understand. If you contribute small changes to a GPL'd project, your changes are a derived work and must be GPL'd. They can be used in GPL'd project, and only GPL'd projects (not, BSDL, ASL, or LGPL projects, for example). If you contribute to a BSDL project, then your changes are BSDL. Anyone can use them in a GPL'd project, but people can also use them elsewhere. If you use a 2-clause BSDL, you are helping the entire Free Software community (and possibly helping the proprietary software community as a side effect), but if you chose the GPL then you are only helping those with the same narrow ideology as yourself (and it has to be the same version of the ideology, since GPL2 is incompatible with GPL3 and LGPL3).

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[flnca]

Wasn't there something about expensive Qt licenses for development? What's the difference if a company has to pay for Qt development as opposed to paying for Motif development?

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[TheRaven64]

GCC had no Objective-C support. A company (NeXT) implemented Objective-C support on top of GCC and were (eventually) forced to release this code. They did, in a single 10K line C file, but didn't release the runtime library, making it useless on any platform other than NeXTSTEP. Later, the FSF wrote a replacement runtime library. They then added a load of #ifdefs to the 10K line file in GCC to make it compile Objective-C for their library.

NeXT (later Apple) didn't bother integrating these changes, and kept maintaining their fork of GCC and pulling changes in. No one outside Apple has worked on Objective-C in GCC for about a decade, and no one understands the code in GCC because it's absolutely hideous, which prevents new people getting involved.

Fast forward to the present. The third version of the GPL means that Apple are no longer working with the FSF at all - they are maintaining their fork of GCC and not pulling in any changes that are not explicitly dual-licensed. They are also working on a BSD licensed compiler framework, LLVM, and a new front end called clang (C language family). This can has more up-to-date Objective-C parsing than the FSF's branch of GCC, supporting a lot of Objective-C 2.0 features. The code generation is nicely abstracted from the AST, meaning it's easier to support different runtime libraries. Even though this is not GPL'd, and is developed primarily by Apple, it got code generation for the GNU runtime before code generation for the NeXT/Apple runtimes. It also got code generation for the newer Etoile runtime (which is also BSDL) before any support for Apple runtimes.

If NeXT hadn't been forced to contribute their changes back originally, GCC might not have had Objective-C support, or it might have had Objective-C support with cleaner layering (the code currently mangles parsing, semantic analysis and code generation into the same layer) - we will never know. The same is true of C++. Would MCC have released a closed front-end for a BSDL compiler? Probably, but this doesn't mean that GCC wouldn't have got a front end eventually. In fact, it would have been more likely to get a good one if it had been BSDL - things like X11 and TCP/IP show us that a BSDL (or MITL) reference implementation is more likely to become the core of an industry standard, since everyone can use it and not just people who like the GPL.

We'd also have had better IDEs, since the GPL and the fanatical devotion to preventing people reusing their code in proprietary projects is the reason that we don't see the GCC front ends used for syntax highlighting and refactoring tools now.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Chemisor]

> Wait...are you trying to claim that somehow the GPL is a communist license and the BSD license is not?

Communism is not about giving things away for free. It is about being forced to give away things for free.

> Care to share why you would "not even consider contributing anything to a GPL project?"

I release open source code under MIT license because I want to give the code away; for personal reasons rather than political ones. If I were to use the GPLed license I would only be giving my code to the GPL camp, and nobody else would be able to use it. MIT licensed code can be used by anyone. Since I dislike the GPL camp, the choice is clear.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[convolvatron]

i was a partial victim of motif for a few months when it came out. it was a bad toolkit that got alot of press for a couple years and died. money and time was wasted because it was supposed to be the next big thing.

yes, the licensing was a pita, but it made it that much easier to ignore. in what sense does that argue for gpl over bsd?

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Motif probably set Unix development back by a decade, and was, I suspect, a not-inconsiderable factor in Microsoft's ability to penetrate the server room. And it was, at the time, a better option than the other choices (like OpenLook).

How perceptive! Full support for TCP/IP, long filenames, scripting, and robustness were gravy. What administrators really need are scalable fonts and cool screen savers!

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Brandybuck]

Motif was never BSD or MIT licensed. It was always a proprietary or semi-proprietary library.

Also, the Unix wars occured during a time when neither GNU nor BSD had fully functional Free Software operating systems available. If you wanted an operating system, Unix or otherwise, it was proprietary.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Brandybuck]

I do contribute to GPL software, but only as a contributor. Any project that I control I put under the BSD or MIT license. That's because I have absolutely no interest in suing my users.

p.s. "Communist" is a bad word to use, because development of GPL software is still voluntary. Under communism labor was forced and centrally directed. GPL software is more like a gated community of anarcho-syndicalists.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[turbidostato]

"Wasn't there something about expensive Qt licenses for development?"

No, there aren't. There are "(not so expensive) Qt licenses for PRIVATIVE LICENSE development". Not quite the same thing (as the KDE people can confirm).

"What's the difference if a company has to pay for Qt development as opposed to paying for Motif development?"

Qt itself. And the fact that due to its dual license Qt has a much bigger base of coders and a success case as relevant as KDE. Where has been Motif in the last, how many? twenty years?

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[turbidostato]

"How perceptive! Full support for TCP/IP, long filenames, scripting, and robustness were gravy. What administrators really need are scalable fonts and cool screen savers!"

Well, that's what facts support.

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[flnca]

8/9 years ago, in 2000/1999, when I developed on real AIX and Solaris boxes, Motif was used for most applications. Of course, this might have changed nowadays, but on Solaris, for instance, GNOME is being used now. On most Linux systems, GNOME is the default. But compared to Motif, Qt has many more users now, that's for sure! ;-)

I need to get glasses

[LM741N]

I could have sworn it said "Aleister Crowley."

It got worse recently

[MichaelSmith]

openmotif seems to have disapeared from pkgsrc so I went to motifzone to get the sources but they pointed me to sourceforge. But the SF page only seems to have CVS, not tarballs or binaries.

And copy/paste is still broken in the current version of lesstif...

Re:It got worse recently

[Brandybuck]

Did you send a note to the OpenMotif admins? Bitching on Slashdot doesn't fix the problem.

Re:It got worse recently

[Brandybuck]

Oh, I just checked, and the OpenMotif sources ARE at motifzone! Just go to the download page and there they are! Only the CVS repo is being hosted at sourceforge, the release tarballs are still at www.motifzone.org.

*BSD is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:*BSD is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, why are hackers wasting their time on a sideline project like FreeBSD when they could be making a real difference by helping to improve Linux's wireless support?

These people have the power to help a large number of people, yet they seem to so be caught up in their own little game, an OS that has effectively been dead for almost 3 and a half years, that they refuse to contribute to Linux. It's sad, and speaks volumes about the characters of these people.

It is truly surprising that BSD did reach the high-point it reached almost 3 and a half years ago with developers like these. Frankly, with the immature attitude FreeBSD developers have been showing lately, I'm surprised they have enough hand-eye coordination to bash at a keyboard.

I'm sorry if my wording isn't great, I'm not an English native speaker.

Re:*BSD is dead

[sciencewhiz]

Any work that *BSD developers do to improve wireless support can be used in linux. The reverse is not true.

How did this get upvoted?

[pschmied]

The grandparent asserted that BSD is a valid choice for software that intends to remain open (i.e. So what if a commercial company takes code, improves, and resells when the original free version is available?).

Then the parent tries to refute the point using Motif? WTF? Since when was Motif BSD-licensed?

Finally, the parent closes with a patently absurd statement:

For whatever reasons, the (L)GPL seems to do far more to discourage forking than the BSD or MIT licenses. To anyone who remembers the Unix wars of the eighties, that's definitely a Good Thing(tm).

1. Regarding forking, how many derivatives of BSD have been created since BSD 4.4-lite in 1994? BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and lately some small ones like Dragonfly and PCBSD (based on freebsd.) And how many Linux distributions since '91?

2. Regarding the Unix wars: How many of those Unixes were BSD licensed? Oh yeah, zero. (Okay, maybe one)

I don't think either the BSD, LGPL, or GPL is any more prone to forking than the others from a license perspective. I think it is the BSD *community* that has done a better job of not forking itself stupid.