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Old 1st August 2008
Werpon Werpon is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robbak View Post
For me, the whole idea of "Enforcing Freedoms" makes no sense. If you are enforcing something, you are removing freedoms.
If you want your code to be free, then dump it in the public domain. You cannot get free-er than that. BSD simply adds "don't patent this, don't sue me", which are reasonable restrictions.
Another philosophy behind BSD is 're-authoring code for any reason (apart from code quality, performance etc.) is a criminal waste of resources.' The BSD licence (often called "copycenter", as in "take it down to the copy center and do what you like with it.") ensures that anyone can use BSD code, and if BSD has done it, you do not need to re-do it. GPL restrictions mean that the code often has to be re-written for legal reasons. I think that is unfortunate.
Personally, I think that restricting use of code to other open-source projects is not a reasonable restriction, and largely negates the benefits of releasing source. But that is just me.
What GPL achieves is avoiding anybody else to "lock" the code and to profit from it without giving anything back. I still remember how several months ago Theo deRaadt became so angry towards Linux distros and other vendors because they weren't giving anything back to OpenSSH. Well it's their prerogative according to the license.

In other words, the GPL seeks freedom for final users and developers, and achieves it with a greater success than the BSD license. Furthermore, most open source / free software developers prefer it (just count the successful projects). I think it has something to do with nobody else making a profit from your hard work, and I understand it.
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