BSD - The Dark Horse of Open Source, by Brendan Scott, OS Law (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

Groklaw presents a paper by Brendan Scott on the BSD license. "Brendan Scott has been studying the BSD license, particularly in the context of Australian law, and he has come up with some startling questions. Is the BSD license as permissive as we've thought? The paper is principally for lawyers to consider, but it's certainly of interest to everyone, and note his disclaimer: Nothing in this paper is legal advice or a statement of the law. This paper is an exposition of an (untested) argument as to the effect of the BSD license."

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Thanks to the author

Posted Jan 15, 2007 21:54 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

I'm glad that this paper appeared, regardless of the merit of its arguments. It would be a loss for Free Software if some honest company or person were sued and lost over the use of Free Software. It has been widely assumed that the BSD license grants the right to relicense the software. All parties relying on that assumption should now have a chance to reevaluate their legal standing with regard to the BSD-licensed software.

It would be much worse if we first heard such arguments in court. That scenario would greatly reinforce the (unfortunately) popular fears that reliance on Free Software could "force open" one's own closed source software.

We might see some BSD-licensed software relicensed under more explicit licenses shortly. And that's a good thing. Whatever are the rules, they should be spelled out clearly to limit their abuse.

More hypocrisy

Posted Jan 16, 2007 10:10 UTC (Tue) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link]

I find it amusing that there are many articles on Groklaw about how awful it is that some companies are trying to "get cute with the GPL", and yet it's perfectly acceptable to try and get cute with the BSD licence - with "untested arguments" as well. Whatever happened to trying to get rid of FUD rather than spreading it?

More hypocrisy

Posted Jan 16, 2007 17:29 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

If there are any holes, it's better to see them analyzed by an expert rather than exploited for profit. I don't think Groklaw would object against a similar analysis of potential "blind spots" in GPL.

More hypocrisy

Posted Jan 17, 2007 10:20 UTC (Wed) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link]

I hardly think a similar paper about the GPL with similarly weak arguments would get the time of day on Groklaw, nor the level of respect and protection given by the webmaster.

More hypocrisy

Posted Jan 17, 2007 21:08 UTC (Wed) by rcbixler (guest, #11917) [Link]

I haven't read this article because I don't have time for Groklaw lately
but does the article actually say that "it's OK to get cute with the BSD
license"? Unless Groklaw has changed since I was actively following it,
it was always very much pro-free software and this extends to picking
apart legal documents by community, similar to how a lot of free software
is developed. Given that, I'm guessing the intent of the article is to
give food for thought on what, if anything, needs to be done to shore up
the BSD licence.

"Business-Friendly" licensing

Posted Jan 16, 2007 9:26 UTC (Tue) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link]

There is a common description of non-copyleft licences as being "business-friendly", with the implication that copyleft licences like the GPL are not.

Personally, I don't understand this. If I were a for-profit business contributing open-source code to the community, and one of my comptetitors took some code I'd contributed and built it into a closed-source product that they then used to take customers away from me, I'd feel ripped off. Whereas a copyleft licence forces them to release the source of anything they redistribute.

Thus, to me, copyleft ensures a "level playing field" where all can compete. Which is something that businesses are supposed to be fond of.

"Business-Friendly" licensing

Posted Jan 16, 2007 10:55 UTC (Tue) by samb (guest, #32949) [Link]

There is a common description of non-copyleft licences as being "business-friendly", with the implication that copyleft licences like the GPL are not.

The assumption being that the business in question is in the business of selling software. That's rarely the case.

Back in the late 90s when OSS was gaining mainstream recognition with Linux as it's poster child, the one thing the FreeBSD crowd believed was inevitably going to make their system the open source OS of choice was the BSD license.

"Business-Friendly" licensing

Posted Jan 19, 2007 22:21 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

There is a common description of non-copyleft licences as being "business-friendly", with the implication that copyleft licences like the GPL are not.

I think the discrepancy is just that the implication when someone says BSD is business friendly and copyleft is not is that we mean friendly to licensees (or potential licensees).

Even if the licensee business is a software distributor, he's welcome under BSD to redistribute under copyleft, so the licensee is at least as well off as under copyleft.

But it's a good distinction to make. Taking the larger view, the use of copyleft might very well be more friendly to business than the use of BSD.

"Business-Friendly" licensing

Posted Jan 29, 2007 12:51 UTC (Mon) by Tr0n (guest, #42662) [Link]

.. Tell me, how can you sell a product which you can get for free?

The only thing you can sell, is support or training, which again - you can mostly get through google/experience.

"Business-Friendly" licensing

Posted Jan 29, 2007 20:14 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Ask that of the $8 billion U.S. bottled water industry. Or of Red Hat, Apple or Microsoft. There are plenty of examples.