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Comment by _msw_ | Hacker News Reader

That may be true if a codebase is licensed under the GPL and has a diverse copyright ownership. But the 3 clause BSD is not that.

3 clause BSD gives everyone permission to use it in new works that are made available using license terms of one’s own choosing, so long as the obligations of those 3 clauses continue to be met.

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> 3 clause BSD gives everyone permission to use it in new works that are made available using license terms of one’s own choosing, so long as the obligations of those 3 clauses continue to be met.

But what I get from this is: The project switched away from 3 clause BSD to something that is less permissive.

But the less permissive licence effectively only applies to new modifications to the (contributed) code, which is allowed by BSD, but not by GPL.

The 3 clause BSD gives all the permissions that are needed for someone to add restrictions via their own license terms.

Licenses like the GPL come with an obligation that one not add restrictions when passing the software on to others.

So how did RedHat add restrictions on gpl code base of CentOS?

RedHat says that you can't get future versions if you exercise your GPL freedoms. You are free to redistribute the latest version of RHEL or CentOS or whatever, including all source code for all packages in their repos. But they will never give you another version of any of their software if you do so.

When will developers learn that the BSD does not protect you or your users? I understand the philosophical reasons some folks like BSD/MIT-style licenses, but at the end of the day they are not much more than public domain: anyone can take someone’s work and contributions, make improvements and keep the entire thing — original work and contributions, as well as improvements — proprietary.

If you care about a software commons, if you care about benefiting from the improvements others make to your own software, if you care about your users benefiting from the improvements others make: use a copyleft license!

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