7 ms·

> Yes but the BSD license allows a lot more. So this isn't really a problem. ahm .... is not that the exact problem that a code with a higher amount of restric

by oaiey 3y ago

> Yes but the BSD license allows a lot more. So this isn't really a problem. ahm .... is not that the exact problem that a code with a higher amount of restrictions to be transferred into a licensed environment with less restrictions.

jraph 3y ago
Yep it is. You don't want GPL code in your BSD/MIT licensed project or suddenly your whole project is under GPL. Unless you are fine with this and your only concern is that your code is permissively licensed and you don't care that much about further restrictions applying to the whole project. I believe the *BSD care and want to keep their projects licensed under BSD though. Some GPL code in the BSDs would suddenly prevent use case that are possible today.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  But that's only if you want to mix code. It's fine to mix software which is usually what's done. The BSD kernel layer is very small. Personally I think the whole license thing is a bit overrated anyway. It's more the GNU crowd making this a huge thing, whereas the BSD approach is more like "do whatever you want". Another thing why the BSD camp fits me better. Personally I don't really care about licenses, it's just some legalese to me (I never bother to read or obey EULAs either for example). And if I share some of my code as FOSS I don't even assign a license. But that's just my personal thing.
  - jraph 3y ago
    > But that's only if you want to mix code. Yes, although any GPL program in the BSD land cannot grant the same freedoms than BSD programs and will have to be filtered out for some use cases, which weakens the point of the BSD distributions a bit. That's not only the kernel, it's also userspace tools. > It's more the GNU crowd making this a huge thing, the BSD approach is more like "do whatever you want" I don't believe this to be the case. Some people in the BSD world are adamant that their code should not be contaminated by the GPL for instance because suddenly, they could not grant the rights to their users to take the code and put it into a proprietary product. Some people in the BSD world have a strong opinion on how permissive licenses are the right way to do open source / free software. > the GNU crowd making this a huge thing I believe this to be a huge thing though. It is a huge thing. You should care what people can and cannot do with your code. Maybe you care that people can do "whatever you want" with your code. I think it's worth stopping and thinking about this stuff and the consequences for a moment, at least once. The world is very little "don't care, whatever", things have consequences and maybe you care about some of them. Surely you deeply care about some things? (of course there's no bad answer, you can answer no) I myself think the GPL is the better option in most cases, because I care that the end users' freedom is guaranteed. I pretty much don't want developers to do "whatever they want" with my work, I want them to respect their own users' freedom. This is highly political/philosophical of course. (there are exceptions, for example for codecs you might want the code to be as permissive as possible so the free codec itself is spread and is not replaced with a proprietary one for instance)
    - stiray 3y ago
      > Some people in the BSD world are adamant that their code should not be contaminated by the GPL Yes, and? They want people to be able to use their code freely, without limitations. Check golang packages, they are mostly BSD/MIT. Thats why BSD is in Playstation and Macs. You think there would be linux GPLed code? There is a usecase for everything and linux doesnt cover them all.
      - jraph 3y ago
        >> Some people in the BSD world are adamant that their code should not be contaminated by the GPL > Yes, and? And? Nothing. I'm making an observation, I'm not judging here. They have a strong stance on this, often because they deeply thought about the consequences. I don't agree with them, and I don't care for helping Apple and Sony make their proprietary products, I think we'd probably be in a better world if they participated in improving the commons and that's actually how Linux succeeds, but I respect this stance when it's well thought out.
        stiray 3y ago
        I think that there is completely different reason why they dont participate in improving the linux. As its fundamental mantra of "move fast, break things" is creating bigger and bigger gnordian knot, while FreeBSD mantra is being well though, designed and stable. SystemD will never get into FreeBSD. Docker is still behind FreeBSD jails (released 2000!) that are a security feature since the start. And so on. And people using and developing it, like such system, which linux is absolutely not. For fun check this beauty: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=setfib&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8.1-RELEASE&format=html https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=setfib&apropos=0&s... This why we use FreeBSD. As not only its kernel but also its userspace is well designed.
        jraph 3y ago
        The *BSD have their merits beyond licensing matters indeed, including technical, design, organizational. That's what would make me look into them.
- BSDobelix 3y ago
  > Yep it is. You don't want GPL code in your BSD/MIT licensed project or suddenly your whole project is under GPL. That's not true. The GPL cannot re-license other project's. You just have to write a file with (for example): We use GPL-Software XY, and here you can find our changes to it...that's it, Most proprietary consumer-router-firmware handle gpl just like that, Android has the Linux-kernel and is (over all) NOT GPL.
  - jraph 3y ago
    You are talking about separate programs with separate licenses put together in a package of software meant to run together. I'm talking about putting some GPL code in a program whose code is BSD licensed. Putting a GPL program in a BSD software distribution would not make the whole package GPL (However GPL restrictions will apply to the GPL parts and you may not want this in your package of BSD-licensed software) Of course you can run GPL software on your BSD system, the same way you can run proprietary software on Linux (and BSD). Drivers usually run in the kernel though, so a GPL driver would make the whole thing GPL. Now you can always distribute your BSD-licensed kernel and make your users compile some GPL code into your kernel themselves. It's just that the GPL code unavailable to people that want to build some proprietary product from your BSD distribution, and as a BSD distribution, you might not want too much of this.
    - BSDobelix 3y ago
      >Drivers usually run in the kernel though, so a GPL driver would make the whole thing GPL. NO, absolutely NOT. Not you nor the GPL has the right to re-license someone else code. There are many modules who are not GPL like Nvidia and not even AMD-GPU -> MIT...and still the kernel is GPL, and even the kernel itself has many different (but compatible to GPL2) licenses. If you change GPL code you have to show your changes (if you redistribute the code) if you have MIT/BSD you don't have to make that step, it really has nothing todo if you mix that stuff (if compatible). The maybe ~problem with CDDL/GPL (ZFS) however is, that you redistribute it in binary form.
      - jraph 3y ago
wkat4242 3y ago
I think the problem is more the other way around. Look at all the loopholes the Linux crowd has to do to get ZFS in the kernel. On FreeBSD you can run GPL software without issues. It's all userland anyway. FreeBSD has now separation between kernel and installed software than Linux (where usually if you want rolling userland you must have a rolling kernel too)
- Delk 3y ago
  ZFS is probably the exception. The problems come from OpenZFS being licensed under the CDDL, not a BSD license. There's no problem incorporating BSD-licensed code into GPL-licensed software, though.

by oaiey 3y ago

jraph 3y ago

Yep it is. You don't want GPL code in your BSD/MIT licensed project or suddenly your whole project is under GPL. Unless you are fine with this and your only concern is that your code is permissively licensed and you don't care that much about further restrictions applying to the whole project. I believe the *BSD care and want to keep their projects licensed under BSD though. Some GPL code in the BSDs would suddenly prevent use case that are possible today.

wkat4242 3y ago
But that's only if you want to mix code. It's fine to mix software which is usually what's done. The BSD kernel layer is very small. Personally I think the whole license thing is a bit overrated anyway. It's more the GNU crowd making this a huge thing, whereas the BSD approach is more like "do whatever you want". Another thing why the BSD camp fits me better. Personally I don't really care about licenses, it's just some legalese to me (I never bother to read or obey EULAs either for example). And if I share some of my code as FOSS I don't even assign a license. But that's just my personal thing.
- jraph 3y ago
  > But that's only if you want to mix code. Yes, although any GPL program in the BSD land cannot grant the same freedoms than BSD programs and will have to be filtered out for some use cases, which weakens the point of the BSD distributions a bit. That's not only the kernel, it's also userspace tools. > It's more the GNU crowd making this a huge thing, the BSD approach is more like "do whatever you want" I don't believe this to be the case. Some people in the BSD world are adamant that their code should not be contaminated by the GPL for instance because suddenly, they could not grant the rights to their users to take the code and put it into a proprietary product. Some people in the BSD world have a strong opinion on how permissive licenses are the right way to do open source / free software. > the GNU crowd making this a huge thing I believe this to be a huge thing though. It is a huge thing. You should care what people can and cannot do with your code. Maybe you care that people can do "whatever you want" with your code. I think it's worth stopping and thinking about this stuff and the consequences for a moment, at least once. The world is very little "don't care, whatever", things have consequences and maybe you care about some of them. Surely you deeply care about some things? (of course there's no bad answer, you can answer no) I myself think the GPL is the better option in most cases, because I care that the end users' freedom is guaranteed. I pretty much don't want developers to do "whatever they want" with my work, I want them to respect their own users' freedom. This is highly political/philosophical of course. (there are exceptions, for example for codecs you might want the code to be as permissive as possible so the free codec itself is spread and is not replaced with a proprietary one for instance)
  - stiray 3y ago
    > Some people in the BSD world are adamant that their code should not be contaminated by the GPL Yes, and? They want people to be able to use their code freely, without limitations. Check golang packages, they are mostly BSD/MIT. Thats why BSD is in Playstation and Macs. You think there would be linux GPLed code? There is a usecase for everything and linux doesnt cover them all.
    - jraph 3y ago
      >> Some people in the BSD world are adamant that their code should not be contaminated by the GPL > Yes, and? And? Nothing. I'm making an observation, I'm not judging here. They have a strong stance on this, often because they deeply thought about the consequences. I don't agree with them, and I don't care for helping Apple and Sony make their proprietary products, I think we'd probably be in a better world if they participated in improving the commons and that's actually how Linux succeeds, but I respect this stance when it's well thought out.
      - stiray 3y ago
        I think that there is completely different reason why they dont participate in improving the linux. As its fundamental mantra of "move fast, break things" is creating bigger and bigger gnordian knot, while FreeBSD mantra is being well though, designed and stable. SystemD will never get into FreeBSD. Docker is still behind FreeBSD jails (released 2000!) that are a security feature since the start. And so on. And people using and developing it, like such system, which linux is absolutely not. For fun check this beauty: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=setfib&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8.1-RELEASE&format=html https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=setfib&apropos=0&s... This why we use FreeBSD. As not only its kernel but also its userspace is well designed.
        jraph 3y ago
        The *BSD have their merits beyond licensing matters indeed, including technical, design, organizational. That's what would make me look into them.
BSDobelix 3y ago
> Yep it is. You don't want GPL code in your BSD/MIT licensed project or suddenly your whole project is under GPL. That's not true. The GPL cannot re-license other project's. You just have to write a file with (for example): We use GPL-Software XY, and here you can find our changes to it...that's it, Most proprietary consumer-router-firmware handle gpl just like that, Android has the Linux-kernel and is (over all) NOT GPL.
- jraph 3y ago
  You are talking about separate programs with separate licenses put together in a package of software meant to run together. I'm talking about putting some GPL code in a program whose code is BSD licensed. Putting a GPL program in a BSD software distribution would not make the whole package GPL (However GPL restrictions will apply to the GPL parts and you may not want this in your package of BSD-licensed software) Of course you can run GPL software on your BSD system, the same way you can run proprietary software on Linux (and BSD). Drivers usually run in the kernel though, so a GPL driver would make the whole thing GPL. Now you can always distribute your BSD-licensed kernel and make your users compile some GPL code into your kernel themselves. It's just that the GPL code unavailable to people that want to build some proprietary product from your BSD distribution, and as a BSD distribution, you might not want too much of this.
  - BSDobelix 3y ago
    >Drivers usually run in the kernel though, so a GPL driver would make the whole thing GPL. NO, absolutely NOT. Not you nor the GPL has the right to re-license someone else code. There are many modules who are not GPL like Nvidia and not even AMD-GPU -> MIT...and still the kernel is GPL, and even the kernel itself has many different (but compatible to GPL2) licenses. If you change GPL code you have to show your changes (if you redistribute the code) if you have MIT/BSD you don't have to make that step, it really has nothing todo if you mix that stuff (if compatible). The maybe ~problem with CDDL/GPL (ZFS) however is, that you redistribute it in binary form.
    - jraph 3y ago

wkat4242 3y ago

I think the problem is more the other way around. Look at all the loopholes the Linux crowd has to do to get ZFS in the kernel. On FreeBSD you can run GPL software without issues. It's all userland anyway. FreeBSD has now separation between kernel and installed software than Linux (where usually if you want rolling userland you must have a rolling kernel too)

Delk 3y ago
ZFS is probably the exception. The problems come from OpenZFS being licensed under the CDDL, not a BSD license. There's no problem incorporating BSD-licensed code into GPL-licensed software, though.