Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 21:38:49 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net> To: fconagy@almaden.ibm.com (Janos Nagy FCO) Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Copyright Message-ID: <199611020238.VAA08933@dyson.iquest.net> In-Reply-To: <9611012326.AA17468@bitman.almaden.ibm.com> from "Janos Nagy FCO" at Nov 1, 96 03:26:21 pm
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> > > > > Dear Sirs, > > I am behind a firewall at at Big Blue ;-) but I would like to continue > to use your system just like at the university. But local policy says > I am supposed to show the license terms to my boss. On the FreeBSD CD > I could find only the Berkeley legal stuff. Is that all, so you do not > impose any other copyright restrictions on the software you have on > the CD or not so? In any case please write me an answer I can show to > the boss, so I colud use FreeBSD opn my laptop. > Speaking as a member of the core team, but not as a laywer, and with my opinions: You more free to use FreeBSD OS than you are if you have a Microsoft product. (Not to get into a war, but just to give an example.) Specifically, you can use it freely, and you can even freely redistribute most of it, without any further encumberances. You can copy and use it on many computers if you want, without any further restrictions. As a user you are very much home free, just use it within the bounds of the policy of the organization that you work for. FreeBSD is more free than Linux, so if you have a precedent of using Linux at work, FreeBSD is legally applicable in even more situations. The only encumberances that you might have, can be covered by having one CD per machine that you copy the code to. There are certain portions of the CD that are under the GPL. To be the most conservative, you have met practically every restriction of the GPL if you have a copy of the CD (source code) for every machine. The non-GPLed portions of the system (e.g. basic kernel) can be reproduced and placed into production, even into a proprietary product without redistribution restrictions. So, at a big company, like IBM, who have deep pockets, and are paranoid (appropriately so), if you have one copy of the CD per machine, and treat the copy of code like you would a piece of Microsoft software -- then you are very very safe. It is being overly conservative, but at only $20-$40 per copy, it is VERY VERY cheap insurance. (I am not trying to sell CDs, but simply trying to say that you can treat the software just like commercial software, and be totally safe.) You can then continue with your companies regular policies, and not have to special-case anything... However, if you can enlighten your legal dept, and mgmt, you will find that the license terms such as what FreeBSD has are very very liberal. Specifically, you don't really have to buy a copy of FreeBSD for every machine that is running it. John
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