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NetBSD Moves To a 2-Clause BSD License

Posted by timothy on Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:36 PM
from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept.
Announcements Operating Systems BSD
jschauma writes "Alistair Crooks, president of the NetBSD Foundation, announced recently that it 'has changed its recommended license to be a 2-clause BSD license.' This makes NetBSD even more easily available to a number of organizations and individuals who may have been put off by the advertising or endorsement clauses. See Alistair's email and NetBSD's licensing information for more details."
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Submission: NetBSD moves to a 2 Clause BSD License by jschauma (90259)
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  • Will (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    or proof of the will to live and the flexibility of some FOSS projects...

  • Didn't FreeBSD do this years ago?

  • Ignored? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by debatem1 (1087307) on Tuesday June 24 2008, @12:53PM (#23921203)

    + we have seen some instances where clause 3 was ignored by groups and organisations
    Interesting take on it. Would that more folks saw common ground above license lawyering.

    • Now if this were GPL software, lawsuits would be flying already! Obviously NetBSD has a rather radical definition of freedom, one that has not been approved by our moral arbiters at GNU.

      • Just saying that there should be some room for common sense and common ground in licensing. Licenses should exist to protect authors and end users, not to crucify the community on some eggheaded notion of total enforcement.

  • I thought they did that a day or two ago. I smell dupe!

  • I need to get glasses (Score:3, Funny)

    by LM741N (258038) on Tuesday June 24 2008, @04:20PM (#23924593)

    I could have sworn it said "Aleister Crowley."

    • Re:BSD is dying. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BobNET (119675) on Tuesday June 24 2008, @01:12PM (#23921617)

      Clear, irrefutable proof that BSD is dying.

      I know, it seems like only nine years ago [berkeley.edu] it was a four-clause license, now all [freebsd.org] three [openbsd.org] major [netbsd.org] BSDs have gone to two-clause licenses. Within a decade it'll be a zero-clause license and BSD will finally die...

      • Actually, if you notice, OpenBSD already has a zero-clause license :)

        • You mean the ISC License [wikipedia.org]? Well, I appreciate that it's concise, but there's still one clause in there, even though there's no bulleted points. (And that one clause is still equivalent to the two-clause BSD license.)

          • Yeah, I knew someone would come back with that technicality before I even typed the message, but it was in humour, thus the smiley face.

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        And then the GPL v8 will have a new clause to own all your daughters.
        OpenBSD FTW

        • Funny how BSD is becoming less restrictive and GPL is becoming more so.

          I realise that that is your point, but im allowed to steal it without giving credit now.

          • Only if he put it in the public domain. If his point were BSDL, ISCL or MITL then you have to give credit for it, but you can do whatever you want with it apart from claim it's your point.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by Brandybuck (704397)

              There are two reasons why BSD software will never be public domain. First, it's legally impractical to place something into the public domain. Everything is automatically copyrighted upon creation, but you need a lawyer to actually relinquish that copyright. Second, without a copyright you have nothing to hang a warrantly disclaimer on. The danger is not that someone can file off your name and pretend it is their own, but rather that they can distribute it without your disclaimer.

    • BSD is not dying permanently, its just going through a rebirth cycle. Recently, it was reborn as a mac.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by jcgf (688310)
      That joke is not funny. Fuck off.

    • It's not clear to me how GPL licensing creates free compilers but BSD licensing creates $400 compilers. If some company takes a $0, BSD-licensed compiler, changes two lines of code, and re-sells it under a non-BSD license with no improvements for $400, why would I pay them for it rather than use the $0 original?

      If the reseller makes improvements, isn't it reasonable to be able to choose between the lesser, $0 version and the better, $400 version? And what's to stop me from reverse-engineering their improvements, applying those changes to the $0 BSD version, and releasing the updated version under a BSD license?

      If you want to force your code to remain open-source, and/or don't want people to be able to integrate your code with non-open-source code, you're absolutely welcome to do so, and the GPL is a great choice. But let's not pretend that having a company re-publish your BSD code under another license somehow removes the utility, availability or openness of the original code.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        There is a good rebuttal to this in the FSF essay linked by the comment you're responding to: GCC didn't support C++. Another company implemented a C++ compiler using GCC as a code base, and despite having never released F/OSS before, they were forced to release their C++ compiler under the GPL. Had GCC been BSD-licensed, there would be no C++ compiler for GNU.
        • Writing compilers is so hard! *sniffle*
        • Had GCC been BSD-licensed, there would be no C++ compiler for GNU.

          You say that as if it would be a bad thing!

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TheRaven64 (641858)

          GCC had no Objective-C support. A company (NeXT) implemented Objective-C support on top of GCC and were (eventually) forced to release this code. They did, in a single 10K line C file, but didn't release the runtime library, making it useless on any platform other than NeXTSTEP. Later, the FSF wrote a replacement runtime library. They then added a load of #ifdefs to the 10K line file in GCC to make it compile Objective-C for their library.

          NeXT (later Apple) didn't bother integrating these changes, and

      • If the reseller makes improvements, isn't it reasonable to be able to choose between the lesser, $0 version and the better, $400 version?

        The assumption is that you have the $0 choice. What if say Nintendo offered signed code for the Wii? No competition. When it if came bundled with hardware? No competition. Reality though, it's more often you have a $100 dollar software version X, you add $0 dollars of open source and get $120 dollars of software version X+1. You can't replace it with version X + your BSD tool because they don't speak to each other, only the combined source does. It's not $20 of improvements, it's $20 of profits. As long as

      • Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ?? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Xtifr (1323) on Tuesday June 24 2008, @03:12PM (#23923679) Homepage

        One word: Motif. The mess caused by that is what finally convinced me that the GPL was a justifiable and justified option.

        Motif probably set Unix development back by a decade, and was, I suspect, a not-inconsiderable factor in Microsoft's ability to penetrate the server room. And it was, at the time, a better option than the other choices (like OpenLook).

        Of course, Motif was eventually both reverse-engineered (Lesstif) and engineered around (GTK/Qt), but it was a major obstacle and major headache for far longer than it should have been.

        For whatever reasons, the (L)GPL seems to do far more to discourage forking than the BSD or MIT licenses. To anyone who remembers the Unix wars of the eighties, that's definitely a Good Thing(tm).

        • Motif? What place would a set of GUI widgets have in the "server room" (as you state)?

          • Motif? What place would a set of GUI widgets have in the "server room" (as you state)?
            Windows in the server room is administered with GUI tools. The non availability of unix GUI tools is one reason to use windows.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by rakslice (90330)

            Since the network-transparent design of X meant that, for years, everyone who had an X-capable workstation did run all the widgets in the server room, I'll just dispense with your question and ask the implied one: How do widgets sell servers?

            Ease of use is part of it, at least for some people. But the real answer is that widgets sell workstations and desktops, and workstations and desktops along with poor interoperability between vendors sell servers.

            In this era of free Windows file server software for Un

        • How so?? AIX and Solaris both had (and have) Motif implementations (and CDE) that could (can) be used for application development. For Linux, there've been (and probably still are) commercially available versions (BTW, Qt is still a commercial widget set; why aren't you upset about that?).
            • Wasn't there something about expensive Qt licenses for development? What's the difference if a company has to pay for Qt development as opposed to paying for Motif development?

              • "Wasn't there something about expensive Qt licenses for development?"

                No, there aren't. There are "(not so expensive) Qt licenses for PRIVATIVE LICENSE development". Not quite the same thing (as the KDE people can confirm).

                "What's the difference if a company has to pay for Qt development as opposed to paying for Motif development?"

                Qt itself. And the fact that due to its dual license Qt has a much bigger base of coders and a success case as relevant as KDE. Where has been Motif in the last, how many? twen

                • 8/9 years ago, in 2000/1999, when I developed on real AIX and Solaris boxes, Motif was used for most applications. Of course, this might have changed nowadays, but on Solaris, for instance, GNOME is being used now. On most Linux systems, GNOME is the default. But compared to Motif, Qt has many more users now, that's for sure! ;-)
        • openmotif seems to have disapeared from pkgsrc so I went to motifzone to get the sources but they pointed me to sourceforge. But the SF page only seems to have CVS, not tarballs or binaries.

          And copy/paste is still broken in the current version of lesstif...

        • i was a partial victim of motif for a few months when it came out. it was a bad toolkit that got alot of press for a couple years and died. money and time was wasted because it was supposed to be the next big thing.

          yes, the licensing was a pita, but it made it that much easier to ignore. in what sense does that argue for gpl over bsd?

        • The grandparent asserted that BSD is a valid choice for software that intends to remain open (i.e. So what if a commercial company takes code, improves, and resells when the original free version is available?).

          Then the parent tries to refute the point using Motif? WTF? Since when was Motif BSD-licensed?

          Finally, the parent closes with a patently absurd statement:

          For whatever reasons, the (L)GPL seems to do far more to discourage forking than the BSD or MIT licenses. To anyone who remembers the Unix wars of the eighties, that's definitely a Good Thing(tm).

          1. Regarding forking, how many derivatives of BSD have been created since BSD 4.4-lite in 1994? BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and lately some sm

        • Motif was never BSD or MIT licensed. It was always a proprietary or semi-proprietary library.

          Also, the Unix wars occured during a time when neither GNU nor BSD had fully functional Free Software operating systems available. If you wanted an operating system, Unix or otherwise, it was proprietary.

          • "How perceptive! Full support for TCP/IP, long filenames, scripting, and robustness were gravy. What administrators really need are scalable fonts and cool screen savers!"

            Well, that's what facts support.

    • Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ?? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Chemisor (97276) on Tuesday June 24 2008, @06:25PM (#23926235) Journal

      > In fact, if you still think the BSD is a "good license", read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html [gnu.org]

      Not everyone agrees with GNU's communist philosophy. Personally, I release all my open source code under the MIT license (which is what this new 2-clause BSD license really is), and would not even consider contributing anything to a GPL project. If you got out more, you might have met some people who disagree with you like I do.

      • Wait...are you trying to claim that somehow the GPL is a communist license and the BSD license is not?

        Care to share why you would "not even consider contributing anything to a GPL project?" Just curious.

        • > Wait...are you trying to claim that somehow the GPL is a communist license and the BSD license is not?

          Communism is not about giving things away for free. It is about being forced to give away things for free.

          > Care to share why you would "not even consider contributing anything to a GPL project?"

          I release open source code under MIT license because I want to give the code away; for personal reasons rather than political ones. If I were to use the GPLed license I would only be giving my code to the GP

          • It's not hard to understand. If you contribute small changes to a GPL'd project, your changes are a derived work and must be GPL'd. They can be used in GPL'd project, and only GPL'd projects (not, BSDL, ASL, or LGPL projects, for example). If you contribute to a BSDL project, then your changes are BSDL. Anyone can use them in a GPL'd project, but people can also use them elsewhere. If you use a 2-clause BSDL, you are helping the entire Free Software community (and possibly helping the proprietary softw

      • I do contribute to GPL software, but only as a contributor. Any project that I control I put under the BSD or MIT license. That's because I have absolutely no interest in suing my users.

        p.s. "Communist" is a bad word to use, because development of GPL software is still voluntary. Under communism labor was forced and centrally directed. GPL software is more like a gated community of anarcho-syndicalists.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by sciencewhiz (448595)

        Any work that *BSD developers do to improve wireless support can be used in linux. The reverse is not true.

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