From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 19 02:48:03 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7BBD616A4CE for ; Thu, 19 May 2005 02:48:03 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtpq2.home.nl (smtpq2.home.nl [213.51.128.197]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38D1743D6B for ; Thu, 19 May 2005 02:48:02 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from danny@ricin.com) Received: from [213.51.128.132] (port=42138 helo=smtp1.home.nl) by smtpq2.home.nl with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1DYb4q-0006bE-4b for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 19 May 2005 04:48:00 +0200 Received: from cp464173-a.dbsch1.nb.home.nl ([84.27.215.228]:63261 helo=desktop.homenet) by smtp1.home.nl with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1DYb4o-00016M-UR for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 19 May 2005 04:47:58 +0200 From: Danny Pansters To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 04:47:09 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.8 References: <428BE69F.50CA5ADC@cs.berkeley.edu> In-Reply-To: <428BE69F.50CA5ADC@cs.berkeley.edu> X-Face: "0Qv=,p:+]LvuqrtS4U\z3k"qN=.1]@=?utf-8?q?=258=3F=3BPoab=23v=27F=7E=0A=09!Wm=5Fe-=24=7EL=5D=3B?=>[c*L^Qoladj)x@mH}Bqz"vLO?Zdl}[@V@=?utf-8?q?U=3Fx3=23lI=3A=0A=09=24DN=7E!Hr?=@K`-mNv"zXm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200505190447.09727.danny@ricin.com> X-AtHome-MailScanner-Information: Please contact support@home.nl for more information X-AtHome-MailScanner: Found to be clean Subject: Re: BSD legal question X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 02:48:03 -0000 On Thursday 19 May 2005 03:06, Daniel S. Wilkerson wrote: > I have a rather strange legal question that I'm not sure who to ask of; it > is about GPL vs. BSD but not about the FreeBSD project directly. Asking > someone at the university is the last thing I want to do. Do you have > someone who answers legal questions? It is rather pro-BSD so I didn't > want to write the FSF. I'll spare you the question itself if you are not > interested. > > Daniel Wilkerson Joel is right, if you don't ask the real question we can't comment anyway. And for all the lawyer talk, I say read the texts and apply logic. That gets you insight also and it doesn't cost and the knowledge lasts forever. But if we're going into this anyway, here's an interesting point that people tend to dabble about: One common misperception even in the *BSD world IMHO is that if you use and alter GPL code you have to release your work under GPL also. I don't think that's true. All that's required is that you provide the sourcecode to your changes (pedantically: only if asked for). If you do that under whichever license that pleases you, you're OK. It's the next guy who wants to release (in effect relicense as GPL sees it, not as BSDL sees at it) that code and anything used by it that may get a headache (if they don't provide source). It's also their problem not yours. A better term may be redistibute BTW because that's what's at least copyright is about. User licenses are about both use and reproduction/redistribution. By extension I consider the LGPL for things like libraries and toolkits effectively as BSD or MIT. Otherwise you might as well GPL all content you see with mplayer (which is legally impossible to begin with because the content was never theirs, same with original source code that merely uses a library or a toolkit or some other API that may be GPL'ed). In any event, except when you use public domain, any copyright declarations and terms of acknowledgement stay valid by automagic copyright law being applied. IIUC the problem with public domain is that although you discard copyrights then you can still be held liable, but I'm not sure about that. The BSD and MIT (and others like python, mozilla, apache, qpl, ...) solve that and most have some modest way of crediting. Anyway, that's how I understand things. Now if you have anything specific to ask, please do and do so on the list. That way you'll likely get the most and best responses. HTH, Dan