Why you should use a BSD style license for your Open Source Project

Correct, unless someone asks for it, I believe.

I think to anyone who requests it, within a reasonable period of time, for at most a reasonable fee to cover your expenses for sending it to them IIRC.

IANAL, but my understanding is that anyone who obtains a GPL'd binary is entitled to receive the source as well, from the source that provided them with the binary.

If you are careful with who you distribute the binary to, you could in theory keep the source sort of "secret", though I don't think it's a good general approach to GPL software.

For GPLv2, it depends. If you distribute the source with the binary, you don't need to give the source to third parties. If you provide a written offer for the source, that offer must be good for all third parties whether they've received the binaries or not.

> I have licensed a lot of custom-built software under the > GPL (because I used GPL'ed bits and pieces). None of my > clients ever redistributed their software, most likely > because they considered it a competitive advantage

This makes sense if you're selling some niche code to businesses, but things like the Sveasoft Linksys firmware drama indicate that selling direct to users, especially technical users who understand and maybe already use the GPL, is a whole different world.

"None of my clients ever redistributed their software, most likely because they considered it a competitive advantage."

This kind of thing can get really ugly in M&A situations.

I love FOSS, but it can lead to some unexpected and unpleasant outcomes, even for seasoned veterans of software development and business. As soon as you're faced with "redistributing" key software to potential bidders so they can do their homework on your company's technical, operational and financial merits, you're in copyleft land, like it or not.

Don't get me wrong – I'm not an agent of FUD when it comes to FOSS. I just doubt that most consultant developers are thinking about advisors, accountants, lawyers, private equity, investors, executive and board candidates, etc. when they decide to incorporate GPL'd code.

Personally, I think the GPL is a rather poorly-drafted license, and the concept of "distribution" is right at the heart of the issue. Fortunately, its relevance is waning from my point of view – fewer clients showing interest, and I certainly haven't needed anything that wasn't under MIT/BSD in a few years.

I agree totally. As a sole proprietor the GPL certainly protects my interests and my customers are comfortable knowing they can always hire someone else to enhance or maintain the source. I'm surprised that as it becomes easier than ever to start companies that more programmers don't see this advantage. I believe it's primarily because the VC world is still attracted to the idea that "secret sauce" has monetary value, when the reality of course is that the secret sauce walks out the door every night in the head of some hacker.

"None of my clients ever redistributed their software, most likely because they considered it a competitive advantage."

In some cases, it works. How large is your client base? 20? 50? Did your clients even read the license or know that they have the rights to redistribute it?

If Photoshop were under the GNU, there would be a ton of free versions out there for anyone to download. Same thing with Windows or any other high-profile proprietary app.

Both those companies would slowly start to lose money until they just couldn't make a profit any longer. It then comes down to who has the bigger marketing budget.

"because I could reuse the code I did in other projects, something I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't license the code under the GPL in the first place."

Are you talking about other people's code? I can reuse all of my code in any project, regardless of the license.

"In other words, he fights for the users. ;-)"

He sacrifices the freedoms of the developer for the users. Also making it impossible to make a living by just selling software.

I personally don't ever use GNU code in any commercial projects. I prefer the BSD license because I can use code in any way and I'm not forced to give any of my future rights away as a developer.

I also have released many libraries and apps under the BSD license.

That ignores the rest of the comment. So yes, if you ignore the comment as a whole, and choose to pick out specific parts of the comment, you can claim the entire comment worthless. But I disagree with that approach. With that approach, you've essentially become no better than someone who down votes someone for making a spelling mistake.

BSD is basically just granting a copyright license. Apache grants you a right to use any patents the code may use.

Where I work contracts and grants prefers that we use BSD because they (as I understand it) think apache's patent grants are too broad.

Contracts and grants prefers we use Education Community License over apache http://www.educause.edu/wiki/Educational+Community+License

Hi Kenneth!

The job would have be trivial enough to make it clear to everyone concerned that there was nothing patentable in it, I suppose.

As to GPL compatibility, I've seen this play out with the AFL too (I use the AFL a lot). My take on it is: GPL incompatibility with well-designed, modern licenses like the AFL and Apache is not their fault. It's the fault of the FSF for producing licenses with outstanding flaws. As someone firmly in the BSD camp, I'm not too concerned about the FSF's foibles.

That URL provides no support for your claim at all, and OpenBSD isn't even mentioned. Sadly, a moderate amount of Googling has turned up nothing about why OpenBSD doesn't allow the Apache License: all dead ends. The only thing that turns up is "well, we don't like it philosophically". Perhaps you could point to something more concrete.

"Mixing copyright law with patent law", whatever that means, has nothing to do with risk in commercial products. Apache is very well regarded as a BSD-style license in the commercial environment.