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Old 28th July 2008
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robbak robbak is offline
Real Name: Robert Backhaus
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: North Queensland, Australia
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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.
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