Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 02:58:08 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Manolo Fredricks" <manoman_67@yahoo.com>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: License Question Message-ID: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNIEOAFCAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20051125072719.66976.qmail@web36309.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Manolo >Fredricks >Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 11:27 PM >To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org >Subject: License Question > > > Hi All > > I'm new to this forum. I am a bit confused about the FreeBSD >license and keep getting conflicting answers from different >people. Would like to know you guys think. Here goes. > > If I make modifications to FreeBSD and then distribute it >(the modified FreeBSD) to others: > > 1. Must I provide the source code or can I choose not to? This depends. What do you mean by "FreeBSD" FreeBSD contains some programs that are not under the BSD license. For example the compiler. That is under the GPL. If you modify the compiler the GPL license says you must distribute the mods. Anyone doing what you propose would presumably be not so lazy that they would not actually read the source code they are working on, it will say at the beginning of the code what license it is under. Read the FreeBSD website it contains some text of some of the licenses. Read the text. The text will tell you what is allowable and what is not. If you still have questions about the licensing ON A SPECIFIC SOURCE FILE or questions on A SPECIFIC LICENSE then come here and ask. Otherwise, asking general questions like you are doing is just looking to cause trouble. There is no "get out of jail free card" in the FreeBSD licensing that covers every source file. You do indeed have to actually do the work of looking at everything you are linking into, the source files of it, and check their licenses. Effort has been made to try to get the base system as unencumbered as possible, but this has mainly been done with the idea of not causing problems for users when they compile programs and run them under FreeBSD for their organization or for other people, and not making companies selling FreeBSD binaries have to spend months rewriting critical parts of the system. It is a different ballgame when you are proposing taking source in the FreeBSD distribution and modifying it then distributing only the modified binaries. There are many companies doing this, but all of them had to vet their source the same way you are going to have to do. Sorry, but there is no free lunch here, you cannot just assume everything in FreeBSD is covered under the FreeBSD license. Ted PS Keep one other thing in mind. If you make mods to the FreeBSD files and do not contribute your changes back, you are going to have to be forever rewriting your mods when a new FreeBSD version comes out. If however you contribute your mods back, and they are accepted, (some mods are not accepted) then you will be freed from the burden of having to maintain them. What is more important is that you will get advice and direction from the core as to where they intended to go with FreeBSD, and this will help you to avoid writing mods that later have to be extensively rewritten.
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