Date: 07 Apr 2002 19:11:36 -0700 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, Ian Pulsford <ianjp@optusnet.com.au>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Abuses of the BSD license? Message-ID: <in4rin0wiv.rin@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <20020406191209.GA3203@lpt.ens.fr> References: <200204051922.06556@silver.dt1.binity.net> <3CAE7037.801FB15F@optusnet.com.au> <3CAEA028.186ED53E@optusnet.com.au> <20020406105111.A90057@lpt.ens.fr> <3CAEDDD2.2ADA819F@mindspring.com> <20020406114505.GA2576@lpt.ens.fr> <3CAEE4A1.315CF53@mindspring.com> <20020406191209.GA3203@lpt.ens.fr>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> writes: > OK, I think the point is this. You got the BSD code under the BSD > licence, which is the file /COPYRIGHT in FreeBSD. > > The sentence > 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright > notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. > must be interpreted to mean the entire file, up to and including the > disclaimer in capital letters, should be included in redistribution, > either as part of the source files or as part of the documentation. > Effectively, you must ship the BSD licence with your project. > If that statement is wrong, I'd like to know exactly why. The license doesn't say "the entire file, up to and including the discalaimer", as you observed. There's no good reason to interprete it strangely; in fact the fact that there is an itemized list of what must be restributed is a good reason to interprete it as excluding something(s). So it seem clear to me that one doesn't have to ship and exact copy of the BSD license text with one's project. (One might as well, though; keep reading.) But parts or all of the the code that you ship with your project might still be covered by other's copyrights and BSD license, regardless of whether you include copies of the license or the copyright notices. People are not allowed to publish copies or derivatives of others' code without their license to do so -- period. When you derive from others' copyrighted code you share ownership of rights in the derivative, with attendent complications of shared ownership. The big difference between the BSDL and the GPL and LGPL is that the BSDL allows you to distribute binaries (in which ownership is shared) without being required to distribute YOUR source under somebody else's license. There are less important differences regarding modified source code, etc. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?in4rin0wiv.rin>