BSD Public Domain? No.

BSD Public Domain? No.

Posted Jul 22, 2002 22:11 UTC (Mon) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026)
In reply to: Red Hat has a point by origz
Parent article: Red Hat and software patents

Free software must not only be provided with source at no charge, it must also be under a GPL-type license that prohibits making it non-free. BSD is not free software, but rather software in the public domain.

What? No, sorry, that's just wrong. Public domain refers to software for which the copyright has expired or has been given up by the owner. BSD software is not public domain. Furthermore, BSD software qualifies as free software according to the very specific and clear definition provided by the Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman.

Of course, BSD software cannot properly be called "copyleft" because that term explicitly applies to software with GPL-like licenses that prevent non-free derivation.

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