* Randal L. Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com> [2007-02-16 21:45]: > * Jonathan Rockway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> (Look at OpenBSD vs. GNU... every GNU utility has been >> rewritten just because of bickering over licensing concerns. >> What. A. Waste.) > > Not just bickering. The goal of BSD is BSD-licensing, which > has more freedom for the recipient than GPL does (which keeps > more freedoms for the giver).
Actually, that’s sorta wrong (although you may mean the right thing). The original author is above the system in both cases as he is not bound by the terms under which he has licensed his work to others. (As long as the work does not have contributions from third parties provided under those terms mixed into it anyway.) It only gets interesting when the software is passed on from someone already bound by the licence to someone else. So there are really three kinds of parties involved: the original author, redistributors, and recipients. (Recipients may in turn later become redistributors.) In this picture, GPL protects the recipient’s rights; BSD protects the redistributor’s rights. Since you cannot avoid discriminating against either one or the other party, neither licence is more free in an appreciable sense; they just lean in different directions on this issue. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
