OpenBSD 2.7 is out

[Kevin Buettner]

On Jun 15,  1:18pm, Nathan Saper wrote:

> Most programs in the *BSDs are licensed under the BSD license, which
> gives even more freedom than the GNU GPL.

Be careful with statements like this.  Which one offers more or less
freedom really depends upon your point of view.

When I'm contributing to a project on my own time, I prefer it to be a
GPL'd project because I know that the license will ensure that if
someone wants to use it commercially, they will have to release
their changes and improvements back to the community.

OTOH, I've worked organizations where using a portion of a GPL'd piece
of software wasn't an option because it would have to be linked
against a proprietary code base.  (And if this is done, the
proprietary code base would also have to be GPL'd.)  So, in such
settings, I would look for code that was either public domain or had a
BSD or BSD-like license.

So one way to look at it is that a BSD style license gives others the
freedom to exploit the original developer's work whereas the GPL
ensures that the original developer's work plus improvements made by
others will continue to be free to all.

These licenses might help explain why Linux has more mindshare than
*bsd OSes right now.  The BSD license encourages splintering of the
code base.  I.e, when an organization decides to go commercial with a
BSD licensed piece of software, they will frequently hire up the
principal developers.  That organization will then make proprietary
modifications to the code which remain the property of the
organization.  Meanwhile the original project will either continue on
if there are still interested external developers around or else it
will founder, and perhaps eventually die off.

Contrast this to development of (largely GPL'd) software being done by
Red Hat, SUSE, VA Linux, and many, many others.  Any new improvements
to code developed by these organizations must (if GPL'd) be made
available to everyone else.  Thus the GPL has a unifying influence
on the software rather than fragmenting as is the case with a BSD
style license.

Kevin