Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on August 04, 2004 10:50 PM
"BSD is much more free than GPL, you *don't* have to give away for free, you can close it if you want to. But you *do* have to give everything for free under GPL."
&$#%. What FUD this is.
If you license your software under the BSD license, you're giving it to *anyone* to do *anything* with. You don't necessarily receive *any* payment whatsoever, even if others continue the development and enhance the product.
With the GPL, if others improve your software, they must pass on those improvements if they distribute the software at all. That is the guaranteed payment you get from the GPL.
What you say is true if you're one of those parasites that's using code others release under the BSD. You don't have to give it away for free. But when you use GPL code, you have to return your improvements to the community if you distribute the changed code. But it wasn't ever your code in the first place, so why complain? It's up to the copyright owner to say who gets to do what with his code.
"At least you don't have to give your IP rights to FSF and can change license whenever you want."
You never, ever have to give your rights to the FSF just because you use the GPL. Only a small fraction of GPL projects do this. They have a name: the GNU Project. If you give your copyright rights to the FSF, the only things you lose are your copyright rights, including the right to dual-license. But you're guaranteed that the code will be released under the GPL for all eternity to come, so you haven't lost much of anything if you weren't planning on using multiple licenses. And your software gets the free legal protection of the FSF. That's a pretty nice deal.
As I've said, you can relicense code that you own the copyright to, no matter which licenses it's already released under. If you don't own the copyright to all the code, like in the case of the Linux kernel, you don't have that option, but if that's one of your concerns, you could, like the FSF, require all contributors to give their copyrights to you. The same thing would apply whether you used the GPL or the BSD license.
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Re:Just another GPL zealot looking for freebies.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on August 04, 2004 10:50 PM&$#%. What FUD this is.
If you license your software under the BSD license, you're giving it to *anyone* to do *anything* with. You don't necessarily receive *any* payment whatsoever, even if others continue the development and enhance the product.
With the GPL, if others improve your software, they must pass on those improvements if they distribute the software at all. That is the guaranteed payment you get from the GPL.
What you say is true if you're one of those parasites that's using code others release under the BSD. You don't have to give it away for free. But when you use GPL code, you have to return your improvements to the community if you distribute the changed code. But it wasn't ever your code in the first place, so why complain? It's up to the copyright owner to say who gets to do what with his code.
"At least you don't have to give your IP rights to FSF and can change license whenever you want."
You never, ever have to give your rights to the FSF just because you use the GPL. Only a small fraction of GPL projects do this. They have a name: the GNU Project. If you give your copyright rights to the FSF, the only things you lose are your copyright rights, including the right to dual-license. But you're guaranteed that the code will be released under the GPL for all eternity to come, so you haven't lost much of anything if you weren't planning on using multiple licenses. And your software gets the free legal protection of the FSF. That's a pretty nice deal.
As I've said, you can relicense code that you own the copyright to, no matter which licenses it's already released under. If you don't own the copyright to all the code, like in the case of the Linux kernel, you don't have that option, but if that's one of your concerns, you could, like the FSF, require all contributors to give their copyrights to you. The same thing would apply whether you used the GPL or the BSD license.
God. Sometimes I think people will never get it.
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