Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 03:36:50 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Ian Pulsford <ianjp@optusnet.com.au>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Abuses of the BSD license? Message-ID: <3CAEDDD2.2ADA819F@mindspring.com> References: <200204051922.06556@silver.dt1.binity.net> <3CAE7037.801FB15F@optusnet.com.au> <3CAEA028.186ED53E@optusnet.com.au> <20020406105111.A90057@lpt.ens.fr>
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Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Ian Pulsford said on Apr 6, 2002 at 17:13:44: > > To paraphrase and make a nice English sentence, "redistributions and use > > in source [...] forms, with or without modification, are permitted > > provided" "redistributions of source code [...] retain the above > > copyright notice...". > > Yes. > > > So where did the idea that you could use BSD licensed code without > > regard for (retaining) the license come from? > > (a) Copyright notice != license. Yes, you must retain the notice. > It doesn't say anything about how you may license the code to > third parties. "This notice" is inclusive. You can't delete lines out of the middle of it, and claim continued compliance. This means you must leave the license terms intact. > (b) You are not compelled to redistribute the source code. (If you > were, it would be a "viral" license like the GPL.) No, but you are required to duplicate the notice in accompanying documentation. Whether this grants people the right to distribute the binaries of the code you distribute is questionable. If you have not modified the sources to containt your own intellectual property, it probably means that they *can* distribute the binaries that don't contain proprietary code. Practically, sorting out which code is distributable or not is an all but impossible task (and you might as well just grab the original sources and compile them yourself, anyway, and avoid the risk and the sorting hassle). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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