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Dispelling BSD License Misconceptions
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jan 15, 2007 02:03 PM
from the deflating-the-demons dept.
from the deflating-the-demons dept.
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.'"
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What about the MIT license? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fascinating (Score:3, Informative)
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I think your understanding of the license is basically correct, but you don't seem to be seeing the im
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According to Microsoft, this is no longer true. BSD code were only used earlier to get TCP/IP functionality into Windows quickly when it became obvious that Internet (and not Microsoft Network, a.k.a. MSN) would be the next "big thing"
But of course the source isn't available , so we can't verify this claim.
Re:Fascinating (Score:4, Informative)
The BSD licence does not say that any modifications must also be released under the BSD licence. It does say that that a copy of the original licence, copyright notices, disclaimer, etc, must be including in any redistribution of the source or binary.
In fact, the BSD licence does not say anything about licensing any code—at all.
Parent
Re:Fascinating (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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The email client pine used to be nominally BSD-licensed, until the FSF tried to make a GPLed version. Then Washington University got all sniffy about relicensing, claimed that the BSD license didn't say what everybody thought it said (something about distribution being allowed, and modificatio
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IANAL etc
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all the best,
drew
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A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law.
But the guard cannot admit him.
May he hope to enter at a later time?
That is possible, said the guard.
The man tries to peer through the entrance.
He'd been taught that the law was to be accessible to every man.
"Do not attempt to enter without my permission", says the guard. "I am very powerful. Yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more powerful than the las
Only in Australia! (see article for details) (Score:4, Informative)
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?
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But redistribution of unrelated source code is also a distribution of source code. Why stop at applying the license to source code written explicitly to extend the licensed code? You could extend it to source code written by anyone using the licensed code, whether their new code interacts with the licensed c
It's Funny. Laugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's Funny. Laugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
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Programmers, sick of legal bickering? (Score:4, Interesting)
SQLite [sqlite.org] is released to the public domain and it's some damn fine code.
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Personally I care more about other people being able to benefit from my code than preventing corporations from using it for profit.
Most OpenSource licenses aren't about stopping corporations from profiting and many even encourage that. They are also not about giving away code. Most are about making a trade. You can have my code if I can get credit, or use any code you write to improve it. If I'm writing some code either personally or for my company my motivation for licensing it with an OS license is to
Yes, Sick of this Shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org](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 [sourceforge.net](much better history, as you would expect from a free software project) survived thanks to the efforts of Bill Schelter [wikipedia.org], 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?
Parent
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Maybe I misunderstood the history of Macsyma, but it sounds like the GPL would never have helped since the original code was not public in the first place.
I believe all government source should be public domain or MIT-licensed for all to use. No particular party should have control of it within the bounds of the government. If a company wants to commercialize it or others want to GPL it, that is fine. Since everyone from companies to in
Arcane (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
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Close, but no cigar:
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No your honor, I have not been drinking.
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There are different styles, so consult your lawyer. One good example is Apple iTunes which has a file called, "Acknowledgements.rtf", in its main directory which contains the following:
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Gee, and until I got here I was under the impression that the subject had to be 'Ode to a musk ox!' A sonnet you say? Are you certain?
By the way, you must be brillig!
all t
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In truth, they're largely right. The clause explicitly says that source-distributions must effectively contain a reproduction of the entire license. It does it by separating the license into three parts, then demanding that each part be included.
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Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
[then the conditions]
[then the warranty disclaimer]
Uhhh.. a common misconception by idiots maybe.. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
We should all LOL at this conclusion (Score:2, Insightful)
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/06/12/31/010221.sh tml [slashdot.org]
And the BSD/MIT licenses are the GPL's nearest competitor according to a poll here at
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid= [slashdot.org]
The best part of this paper is this... (Score:2)
Summary (Score:2)
In Australia, at least.
Seem
Wow, that's shockingly stupid. (Score:2, Informative)
Unofficial Word From Someone at UC Berkeley (Score:3, Informative)
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.
*sigh* (Score:4, Insightful)
(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.
This line of argumentation is specious ... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Fundamental error (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
don't be confused (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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Much therefore of Unix stuff in windows has a perfect right to be there. I was told by someone who enjoyed poking around deep in windows that some original BSD text can still be seen in the windows stu
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Condition number 1 says redistribution of the source code must retain the license (copyright, conditions, disclaimer). Condition number 2 says that redistribution of binaries must be accompanied by the license.
You may of course, rudely wrap the BSD license inside of the GPL. Examples would be distributing a package under the GPL even though the software inside it was BSD. You cannot restrict the user from redistributing the package contents under the ter
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That's effectively what Berkeley did when AT&T sued them over the release of the BSD Unix source code - they countered by pointing out that AT&T had stripped BSD copyright headers from a number of files included in System V. Berkeley pointed out that AT&T were welcome to restribute their code as a binary only, commercial product, but that the copyright stripping in the separately licensed source release contravened the BSD license.