NetBSD Moves To a 2-Clause BSD License

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."

Re:"from the declaused-but-not-neutered dept." ??

[Kjella]

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 they're not in direct competition, it's basicly a free lunch.

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?

Nothing but time and money. Quite likely the one making $400/copy is making some money off it allowing him to work on it, while you're on a $0 quest for BSD glory but don't let that stop you.

I need to get glasses

[LM741N]

I could have sworn it said "Aleister Crowley."