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Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 12:57:55 -0700
From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
To: R Joseph Wright <rjoseph@mammalia.org>
Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: BSD license questions
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References: <20000907115433.A19971@mammalia.org>
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* R Joseph Wright <rjoseph@mammalia.org> [000907 11:54] wrote:
> Does the BSD license make it so that, even if a proprietary (binary only)
> piece of software is derived from BSD, that software must be freely
> distributable by anyone?  That is the impression I get by reading this section 
> of the license:
> 
> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
> modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
> are met:
> 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
>    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
> 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
>    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
>    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
> 
> How can a company, like BSDI for example, charge for single user/multi user 
> licenses for their software if the BSD license allows one to make copies?

Because it only affects one level.  The source will forever be
'tainted' with the copyright notice but that's all, it doesn't
state that the code must be released under the same license, just
that it must retain the notice in the source and a notice of
recognition with the docs and/or other materials provided with the
code.

Basically, if BSDi was using my code, it would be sufficient for
them to just put a copy of my license clause somewhere in a list
of credits given with thier documentation, they would then be
free to copy or relicense the code in binary format as they saw
fit. 

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."


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