Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 11:10:17 -0700 From: "Frank Warren" <clovis@home.com> To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@nwlink.com>, "Postmaster" <webmaster@radikal.net> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Copyright and payment Message-ID: <046f01bff7f5$eb8ae5e0$63770118@lvrmr1.sfba.home.com> References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.1000726232722.7653B-100000@utah>
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There is a great deal of misunderstanding here. FreeBSD does not really refer to it being available at no cost. It refers to INTELLECTUAL freedom. You can "own" this code if you like, and charge what you like and think is apt depending on your value-add. You can take it private. GPL code you cannot. You MUST make the source available to everyone no matter what you do. You can of course do value-add to GPL code ,and charge for it, but there's no point to paying for it as the source must be released on demand. The Regents have modified their copyright recently so you don't have to give them credit for its development at Berkeley. I'm not sure when, or if, this will be adopted by the FreeBSD project. The point is, if you are free to give your code to FreeBSD, you should be free to reclaim it and use it for your own business purposes later without having to release the project's source itself. Thus the GPL License is seen as a "virus" that is - it infects all new code with itself if one has ever put anything under the GPL. It no longer can belong to you at all. It may have been all your new, original code, but once under GPL, it belongs to FSF, and you can't get it back. Under the FreeBSD license, per about a year ago, you put your copyright on it, it has to stay with the code or its derivations, and anyone can just use it lawfully so long as they give credit for its origin. By this arrangement, when you take your code back for something and use it for your own commercial purposes, it again disappears. Those whose Free Source code you are using get credit for their contributions. But there is no inherent anti-business, socialistic or Marxist overtones to the copyright. If you come up with the idea for a great new app based on things you've given to the Free, Net or Open code bases in the past, you can use your own work and take its further development private so you can make a good living. If you do this with FSF-licensed code, it could mean you go to jail since copyright violation is a criminal as well as civil offense. FreeBSD is made available at no cost. But the Free in FreeBSD means intellectual freedom more than it does no cost. OpenBSD and NetBSD are just as "free" if you download them. The real idea of all these BSDs is that the environment really is free in all possible respects. OpenBSD concentrates on security audits and tends to be the most break-in-proof as it comes. But because it insists on auditing everything, it is well behind FreeBSD in what it has. NetBSD concentrates on an even, portable port which goes to any architecture known or under development with minimal fuss. It is the most portable BSD. FreeBSD concentrates on having the most useful general system. NetBSD, for instance, does not even have an adduser command last time I used it. FreeBSD is the most compatible with other types of binaries. It is the most useful of the BSDs for general use. This is why I use FreeBSD. Walnut Creek CDROM, along with BSDI in on the act now, means that while it's not as cheap as OpenBSD or NetBSD for CDROMs, there are more docs, there are more applications, I'm not having to port every application I see which I want to run on it, and there are places like this list where one can get some support and get up to speed. This explains why FreeBSD has such a large user base compared to OpenBSD or NetBSD. I do believe the FreeBSD install base is several times larger than Net and Open combined. So, sure, you can charge as much for FreeBSD stuff as you want - be it for media, for the service of supplying it, for installing it, whatever. If one does not want to be civilly sued for misrepresentation, it would be best to charge for support and be very clear about this. FreeBSD, for all its strengths, is not a good Windows replacement. Most Windows users only want to run Micro$teal apps, and don't care that they have to reboot every day because the system is such junk. A good example of the absolute freedom of the BSD code base is that it WAS taken private at one point by BSDI, which has recently merged back with CDROM.COM and which shared a lot of code with the FreeBSD project. BSDI was offering a lot of support, and was what made them viable in the market. Does this clear things up a bit? ----- Original Message ----- From: Jason C. Wells <jcwells@nwlink.com> To: Postmaster <webmaster@radikal.net> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 11:31 PM Subject: Re: Copyright and payment > On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Postmaster wrote: > > > Is it legal to sell FreeBSD for money ($1000?) to customers without telling > > them it's free before they pay? Any rules for this? > > The copyrights are here: > > http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/copyright.html > > No comment about anything to do with sale price is included in the > copyright for the FreeBSD copyrigt or the BSD copyright. The GPL parts are > a whole 'nother animal which I don't care to understand. > > You must abide by the copyrights. > > Thank you, > Jason C. Wells > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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