10 ms·

I don't understand the dangers of BSD style licenses, can you expand on that a bit please?

sitharus 10y ago
The "danger" is BSD licenses are highly permissive, you can take BSD licensed software, modify it and sell it and never return the changes to the community or release the source to customers. This means all the work of the OSS community is 'free' for corporations to take.
- stephenr 10y ago
  So basically, if you make some improvements to something, you get to control those improvements. What a horrible idea that is. Note: this is clearly sarcasm, and it pains me that I need to put this here, but some won't get it.
  - tortasaur 10y ago
    Considering it doesn't sustain the free software you needed to improve in the first place, yes, that is a terrible idea.
  - pavanky 10y ago
    Eh you are not losing control with GPL. If you choose not to contribute back (when using a non copy left license), you are choosing to not provide control to anyone else.
- afsina 10y ago
  Coders are not idiots, they know that possibility and still use the license for their open source code. So, "danger" is a silly word to describe this.
jvreeland 10y ago
This is a pretty simplistic explanation, but the BSD license doesn't require you to provide the source to customers. Essentially the argument is that companies will consume FOSS software without contributing back improvements to the determent of the community.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  Isn't that really the norm now with hosted applications, if I patch nginx on my server there is no obligation to create a pull request.
  - yorwba 10y ago
    It is the norm because most FOSS is not licensed under the AGPL. In any case, even AGPL does not require you to create a pull request, you only have to make the source available to your users, i.e. everyone who connects to your patched server.
flukus 10y ago
The danger is that it can return to closed source at any time.
- btbuilder 10y ago
  This is true for GPL too if the copyright holders (authors or rights holders if signed over) decide to relicense. It has happened many times before. An example would be Nessus. This wouldn't retroactively change already released code however.
- yellowapple 10y ago
  Only the copyright holder can turn a FOSS project non-FOSS. This is true even for the strictest of copyleft licenses (and in fact has happened before).

The "danger" is BSD licenses are highly permissive, you can take BSD licensed software, modify it and sell it and never return the changes to the community or release the source to customers. This means all the work of the OSS community is 'free' for corporations to take.

stephenr 10y ago
So basically, if you make some improvements to something, you get to control those improvements. What a horrible idea that is. Note: this is clearly sarcasm, and it pains me that I need to put this here, but some won't get it.
- tortasaur 10y ago
  Considering it doesn't sustain the free software you needed to improve in the first place, yes, that is a terrible idea.
- pavanky 10y ago
  Eh you are not losing control with GPL. If you choose not to contribute back (when using a non copy left license), you are choosing to not provide control to anyone else.
afsina 10y ago
Coders are not idiots, they know that possibility and still use the license for their open source code. So, "danger" is a silly word to describe this.

jvreeland 10y ago

This is a pretty simplistic explanation, but the BSD license doesn't require you to provide the source to customers. Essentially the argument is that companies will consume FOSS software without contributing back improvements to the determent of the community.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
Isn't that really the norm now with hosted applications, if I patch nginx on my server there is no obligation to create a pull request.
- yorwba 10y ago
  It is the norm because most FOSS is not licensed under the AGPL. In any case, even AGPL does not require you to create a pull request, you only have to make the source available to your users, i.e. everyone who connects to your patched server.

flukus 10y ago

The danger is that it can return to closed source at any time.

btbuilder 10y ago
This is true for GPL too if the copyright holders (authors or rights holders if signed over) decide to relicense. It has happened many times before. An example would be Nessus. This wouldn't retroactively change already released code however.
yellowapple 10y ago
Only the copyright holder can turn a FOSS project non-FOSS. This is true even for the strictest of copyleft licenses (and in fact has happened before).