[GLLUG] Burnbox Future

[Richard Houser]

Steve,

The BSD license gives the RECIPIENT of the software maximal freedom, not 
the copyright holder.  The copyright holder always has additional rights 
in excess of the BSD or GPL licenses.  The GPL is an attempt to strike a 
balance between the "gift" of content to public domain and the default 
restrictions of copyright law.  The BSD licenses are little more than 
"do what you want with it, but you can't plagiarized our work and claim 
you wrote it".

The danger of the BSD license is that it allows others to take your work 
and then improve it just enough to take a chunk of the market and close 
the source on it.  I'm talking about something like Microsoft extending 
a product so that it is no longer compatible with the original, closing 
the source, and selling it as their own.

If Clay wanted to sell his software at a later date, he is free to do so 
under any license he wishes.  A competitor basing a product off his work 
would either have to get a new license from Clay due to his copyright 
(which could very result in a BSD style license or a complete transfer 
of copyright) or release any distribution of its product under the GPL 
as well.  This protects Clay's own work from being used against him to 
steal his product's potential market.

The BSD licenses are great for mass adoption, but much less optimal for 
the developer or his project's survival in the market (whether offered 
for free or not).  If the rest of the open source community didn't agree 
in general, the GPL wouldn't have caught on in such a big way.

STeve Andre' wrote:

> I do not want to start a flame fest over this, but I can't let that comment
> about BSD licenses go uncommented on.  A BSD license gives the maximum
> flexability.  If you use a GPL license companies are far more likely to stay
> away from it, due to the viral concepts in it.  Companies *do* buy BSD
> licensed stuff.  Usually they do so because they then know that they can
> get help from the author.  A few thousands of dollars for something already
> written is *far* cheaper than attempting to write it in-house.
> 
> I prefer the BSD license because of its simplicity.  In consulting once I was
> dealing with two laywers who were coming up to speed on open source
> licenses.  After they got over the concept of someone handing out the
> code for free with no expectations of anything (BSD), they got to the GPL
> and started pondering it.  And pondered more.  They understood the
> idea (and apprecaited it) of the GPL but saw interesting parts which a
> shark laywer could chomp on and do things with.
> 
> --STeve Andre'