Joey Kelly wrote:
> I guess I can jump in here, now that I'm back in town.
Glad you made it back in one piece.
> BSD has often been equated to a license to steal, and in fact Microsoft
> "stole" the BSD networking stack for NT4. The license allows no actual
> stealing, but it comes pretty close. Sure, you can argue otherwise, but if you
> write code, anyone can take it and do what they want with it, and they owe you
> little-to-nothing in return. Money isn't the currency in question... their
> changes are theirs, and you can't use their modifications, unless they decide
> to be nice to you. They can change the license AFAIK, or at least that's what
> Microsoft did, unless I'm sorely mistaken.
As much as I like the BSD, mostly because it is closer to truly free
software, like the GPL I see an issue with it. Initially I wasn't
opposed to the ability of the software to be integrated into proprietary
systems, but later it dawned on me that money was being made on other
people's work. I never got around to writing it up, but I've always
thought a tweak to the BSD license was needed. Something like the
following:
3. IN THE CASE OF CLOSED SOURCE, PROPRIETARY AND PRODUCTS COVERED BY
NDA, REDISTRIBUTIONS OF BINARIES AND SOURCE ARE PERMITTED ONLY IF
EXPLICIT PERMISSIONS IS GRANTED BY THE AUTHOR AND, IF APPLICABLE,
LICENSE FESS ARE PAID TO THE AUTHOR.
Obviously it would need to be tweaked and reviewed by a legal beagle,
but a tweak like this would allow the source to remain open, without
compelling anyone to use a specific open source license, but it also
allows code to be use in proprietary products in a way that isn't
detrimental to open source. The license to "steal" becomes much more
equitable to the folks who would be stolen from.
J
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Received on 12/15/08
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