On Monday, August 8, 2005 at 20:45 +0100, teresahackett@eircom.net wrote:
This library software company claims to produce "open source" library applications. The paragraph below indicates that they are not free software. Is this what they mean by a "BSD-like" license?
Thanks if anyone can advise.
The BSD license *is* actually a Free Software license, but we prefer the GPL for a couple of reasons:
The so-called "BSD style" license (so-called because they are derived from the license used for the Berkeley Software Distribution, a unix variant) Allows People to share and modify code just like copyleft licences.
(i) it does not require derived versions to also be free. This means someone can take the BSD licensed version, make a change, and then refuse to share the change back. Obviously, this hurts the community; they benefit from the work of the community but won't join it.
(ii) The original BSD license contained a clause that required all advertising to credit the regents of UCB. The problem is that when you build a system (like GNU/Linux, or even OS X) that includes hundreds of components the BSD license could require you to include the names of all the authors in your advertising. Somewhere on the FSF page there's mention of an advert with 75 such lines! The "modified BSD" license doesn't require this, but it's not clear which one they are using.