Talk:BSD licenses
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[edit] Untitled discussion
The format and content of this page is all wrong :
-= Format =-
- Category : Name - Category : Usage - Category : History - Category : Protection Clause terms - Category : Copyright holders - category : BSD-related disputes - Category : BSD compatibility - Category : Opponent - Category : Criticism - Category : Common misconceptions - Category : Links and references - Category : See also - Category : External links - Category : BSD revision
-= Content =-
"permissive"
The BSD protection clause dont give any permission , or rights. Its an abandonware license do as you wish as long as you dont sue me back for the use of the code.
The copyright holders of BSD dont care about there code and they are the one who have been
permisive on its usage not the protection clause itself
"Permissive licenses"
Traitor license is more appropriate , where as BSD is supossed to promote the use and promotion of Open Source software , its ALWAYS used as a trojan horse to take control of the code released under it. Allowing derivative license switch to something else almost always closed.
"sometimes with important differences pertaining to license compatibility "
BSD is compatible with everything. It defends and protect no value.
"The licenses have few restrictions compared to other free software licenses such as the GNU GPL or even the default restrictions provided by copyright, putting it relatively closer to the public domain. "
The license as no restriction of usage , you can close the code , switch the license , close your derivative. But it also as no protection of rights like the rights to modify the code , the right to see the code , the rights to learn from or study the code.
- 145.254.233.213 05:02, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC) minor text revs for smoother reading... (trying to be WikiGnoming):
- add forward ref to the first mentioning of "advertising clause" for better reading (sudden use of terms explained only later should be forward referenced)
- "The BSD License does not prohibit the use ... A notable example of such use is ..." (Substituted such use for this because using this is inaccurate, although this advancement costs a duplication of the word use.)
- re-spelled "BSD License Template"
- NOTE: The meanining of, the clause deletes the third section, seems unclear to me. Could the Original author of that phrase please clarify ? (Did you mean to say, the third section of the clause is deleted or something like that? While I don't know about the intricacies of the licenses in question, it seems strange to me that a non-present clause (the third one necessarily omitted from a 2-clause vs. the 3-clause version) should be able to "do" something ("delete" a section or anything)).
SteveAtlanta 01:47, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
- I have just completed some fairly significant edits to the article, which I feel warrant justification on this page:
- The article as it stood seemed to be less about "what the BSD licence *is*", and more about "why proponents of certain other licenses don't like it". Text of the old license with its 'advertising clause' was included twice in different locations within the article... while amazingly enough, the actual text of the current license as it has existed for a half-dozen years was not included at all!. My primary aim was to balance an objective explanation of the BSD license terms with a neutral overview of contraversy in its history. I realize what an emotional hot-button issue free software licensing can be, so please give me constructive feedback and discussion if you feel I may have gone too far in specific places to overcompensate for perceived non-NPOV writing.
- I added a quote of the full current BSD license text to the Terms of the BSD license section. I removed the quote of the original BSD license's 'advertising clause', because I felt it to redundant considering the text of the entire original license containing that clause is already included.
- I took bits and pieces of text about the BSD's relationship to proprietary software, and to GPL'ed software, and pulled them all together along with some original content in sections named Compatibility with proprietary software licenses and Compatibility with other free software licenses. This seemed like a more logical structure for organizing all that scattered information.
- The advertising clause section had become a holding area for information about all variations in BSD-style licenses, both historical revisions to the official BSD as well as other people's derived variants. I thought it would be much more clean and logical to create a BSD-style licenses section discussing those variants together.
- I thought it was redundant to give in two separate places the story about William Hoskins revoking the 'advertising clause', so I removed the version that was outside the section dealing with the subject. (Don't worry RMS, I didn't touch the edit that you personally added to take credit for that change single-handedly... NPOV aside for a moment, that was just too priceless to alter!). :)
- I made minor changes to correct factual errors. For instance, the previous text stated that a 2-clause BSD-style license was the "official license" for the KDE project. The policy page linked to on the KDE site makes it clear that this license is simply one of three choices that contributors can use, and even then applies only to one particular area of the KDE project.
- The article states certain versions of the BSD license are functionally equivalent to the MIT and ISC license. Please explain this, since clause 2 of the BSD license explicitly talk about binary distributions and the other licenses don't. 84.179.201.32 21:20, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
- The other licenses don't make the distinction and talk about 'the software'. There were also two versions of the MIT license I think, one that talks about 'software' and one that talks about 'software and the supporting documentation'. Oh well. If my understanding of copyright is correct, it is in fact the two-clause and three-clause versions of the BSD license that are equivalent, because there is nothing else granting special rights to use the authors name as an endorsement anyway (but I'd love to be corrected on this). squell 19:37, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
==diff v public domain? so, what is the difference between giving something in public domain vs licencing it under the BSD licence? The article only says its 'closer' to this in comparison with the GPL, but doesnt explain further. --Aryah 16:53, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Isn't the GNU document, "The BSD License Problem", outdated?
No, the document was updated by the GNU project on multiple occasions after the license was changed by the University of California in 1999. Additionally, the problem persists since some software is licensed with the original BSD license, including NetBSD.
[edit] Free Software Foundation about BSD licenses naming
And if you want to release a program as non-copylefted free software, please don't use the advertising clause. Instead of copying the BSD license from some released package--which might still have the old version of the license in it--please copy the license from X11.
You can also help spread awareness of the issue by not using the term "BSD-style", and not saying "the BSD license" which implies there is only one. You see, when people refer to all non-copyleft free software licenses as "BSD-style licenses", some new free software developer who wants to use a non-copyleft free software license might take for granted that the place to get it is from BSD. He or she might copy the license with the advertising clause, not by specific intention, just by chance.
If you would like to cite one specific example of a non-copyleft license, and you have no particular preference, please pick an example which has no particular problem. For instance, if you talk about "X11-style licenses", you will encourage people to copy the license from X11, which avoids the advertising clause for certain, rather than take a risk by randomly chosing one of the two BSD licenses.
When you want to refer specifically to one of the BSD licenses, please always state which one: the "original BSD license" or the "revised BSD license".
I think, X11 should be mentioned in this article, and FSF's point of view and license naming policy should be reflected here as well.
[edit] FreeBSD additions to 2-clause version?
FreeBSD also uses a 2-clause license with an additional statement at the end that the views of contributors are not the official views of the FreeBSD Project.
Does this sentence have any grounding in fact at all? The sample license in the FreeBSD source tree appears to contain no text along these lines: Sample BSD license in FreeBSD source tree. This license file has not been changed in six years.
- Yes, it does: http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html --Mike 18:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Terms belong here, not on wikisource
I removed the "move to wikisource" tag on the actual license text. Reproducing the (short) text here is, IMHO, as appropriate as having a picture of a person in an article about that person. It should stay. --Alvestrand 18:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
