BSD and GPL licensing
Encyclopedia : B : BS : BSD : BSD and GPL licensing
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The main difference between the two licenses is how derivative work is treated. The GPL requires derivative work to also be licensed under to the GPL. The BSD license only requires acknowledging the original authors, and imposes few restrictions on how the source code may be used. As a result, BSD code can find its way into proprietary software. For instance, parts of Mac OS X and the IP stack in Microsoft Windows are derived from BSD-licensed software.
Discussion
Supporters of the BSD license argue against the "viral" nature of the GPL. They argue that the BSD license is more free than the GPL, because it grants the right to do nearly anything with the source code, second only to software in the public domain, and that the nature of the BSD license has encouraged the inclusion of well-developed standard code into proprietary software. BSD supporters feel that the GPL takes away fundamental rights from the users, forcing them to write their own software for tasks that are covered by GPL software if they wish to redistribute it with a non-GPL-compatible license.Existing BSD-licensed software distributions tend to avoid including software licensed under the GPL in the core operating system, except as a last resort when alternatives are non-existent or vastly less capable, such as with GCC. The OpenBSD project, for example, has acted to remove GPL-licensed tools in favour of BSD-licensed alternatives, some newly written and some adapted from older code.
GPL supporters claim that mandating that derivative works remain GPL-licensed fosters the growth of free software, as developers who use GPL code have to share their improvements with the community. GPL supporters claim the derivative work license requirement is more a form of power than a freedom,[link] and that the BSD license allows people to "hoard" the work of others without having to give anything back.
Legal compatibility
Code licensed under the BSD license can be relicensed under the GPL (is "GPL-compatible") without securing the consent of all original authors. Code under the GPL cannot be relicensed under the BSD license without securing the consent of all original authors, as the BSD license does not necessarily require the source code to be again freely available. The Free Software Foundation provides GNU Lesser General Public License that differs by having a weaker copyleft clause concerning linking of libraries between non-copyleft (proprietary or permissive) licensed code.The advertising clause
The original BSD license contained a clause requiring acknowledgments to appear in all advertising materials mentioning the software (see BSD license). The GNU project called this clause "obnoxious", citing the requirement for 75 such acknowledgments when advertising a 1997 version of NetBSD. More importantly, this clause is an additional requirement barred by the GPL, making the original BSD license incompatible with the GPL.Since then, the clause was officially removed from the original BSD distribution, and other BSD distributions followed suit, but NetBSD still uses the original version of the license.
External links
- redirect
- [Freedom or Power?] (Free Software Foundation) — describing "freedom" as freedom for all instead of one
- [The BSD License Problem] (Free Software Foundation) — advocacy against the advertising clause
- [Open-source licensing: BSD is a better model] (Network World) — advocacy for the BSD license
- [Open-source licensing: GPL is a better model] (Network World) — advocacy for the GPL license
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