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Thanks to the authorThanks to the authorPosted Jan 15, 2007 21:54 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104)Parent article: BSD - The Dark Horse of Open Source, by Brendan Scott, OS Law (Groklaw) 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.
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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 latelybut 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.
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