Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

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> The problem is that the GPL willingly refuses to permit advertizing clauses. Is there a congent argument about why an advertizing clause is a limitation of freedom

The advertising clause is not a limitation on freedom. The 4-clause BSD license is a free software license; it just happens not to be compatible with the GPL (not all free software licenses are).

The reasons for this are very practical: not only does it place additional restrictions on the software (which is not permitted by the GPL), but if multiple 4-clause BSD projects are used, each project requires its own separate advertising statement (the 4-clause license does not permit combining these into a single sentence): https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

> The reason the GPL is annoying is that free license with an advertizing clause have existed for a very long time and are actually widely used.

Most modern projects using permissive licenses use 3-clause BSD, MIT/X11, or Apache, all of which are compatible with the GPL. In this day and age, choosing a 4-clause BSD license is a fairly conscious decision to make the project incompatible with the GPL.

Choosing the 4-clause BSD license is a conscious decision to continue to receive credit for all your hard work, when a proprietary software company comes along and includes your code in their product. To me this is a fair compromise for proprietary companies who refuse to open up their source code (i.e., would never touch GPL at all).

As I mention in a reply to the sibling comment, I don't fault the developer for choosing a free software license that suits their purposes. I just don't think it's fair to blame the GPL for the incompatibility that happens when a developer chooses a 4-clause BSD license.

(Also, remember that the developer could always dual-license - ie, "GPL or 4-clause BSD - if you want to use my software in proprietary code, then you have to advertise me").

It's a fair compromise for anyone. Being credited for your own work isn't as evil as RMS thinks (arguably somewhat ironic as he wants the FSF to be credited with Linux).

Huh. This is the first licensing-related thread I've read on HN in months where someone said something I found interesting and informative before I gave up and stopped reading.

Thanks for your even-keeled comments here; helpful and refreshing.

> In this day and age, choosing a 4-clause BSD license is a fairly conscious decision to make the project incompatible with the GPL.

Complaining about this seems a bit strange, since GPL is deliberately incompatible with everything else when it comes to sharing. OpenSSL's license, although kooky, is freer than the GPL in terms of who can use the stuff covered by it.

> Complaining about this seems a bit strange,

For the record, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that it's unfair to blame the incompatibility solely on the GPL (as OP seemed to be), when the developer is the one who chooses the license for their software. (And I presume the OpenSSL authors are experienced enough to be familiar with the compatibility differences between the 3-clause vs. 4-clause BSD license).

> OpenSSL's license, although kooky, is freer than the GPL in terms of who can use the stuff covered by it.

No, both are equally free. Both of them respect the four freedoms, so they are both free licenses.

(The 4-clause BSD is arguably more permissive, but on the other hand, the GPL permits one to advertise the software without any restrictions, so it really depends on which of those two one values more. Generally the copyleft clause is what people care about more than advertising, but it's important to note both).

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