[Sussex] Ok the gauntlets on the floor!

[John D.]

On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 16:53, Geoff Teale wrote:

> That I would suggest was him trying to put a nasty spin on the fact that 
> if you use GPL source in your program then your program must also be 
> licensed under the GPL.  Microsoft much prefer the BSD license, which 
> means you can take someones code (which they give to you under the very 
> open BSD license) , include it in your project and then charge people a 
> lot of money for it whilst not passing on the same rights you so 
> graciously recieved.

and

On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 17:00, Steve Dobson wrote:

> AFAIK the "software communism" is M$ FUD (if not M$ then someone trying
> to stop Open/Free Software).  It amazes me that there are still many
> Americans that think that communism is akin to devil worship.
> 
> As for the "software cancer" our friends over in *BSD land do see the
> GPL as a virus.  And they do have a point.  The GPL requires that any
> derived work is also GPLed - thus "cancer".
> 
> The BSD license places no such restriction on derived works.  You can 
> take the BSD source, compile it (changing the name from "BSD" to
> "BJOS" [1] but only if you want) and sell it on.  So in this sense the
> BSD is more "free" than the GPL.

Thanks for the clarification chap's. I sort of figured that there was a
difference, but the extent of that difference had eluded me.

Not really having put too much thought to it, I suppose that the GPL is
probably better for interlectual improvement, as opposed to using the
BSD ploy/approach i.e. I understand that the TCP/IP stack in windows
originates in BSD. How true that is, is probably anyones guess.

regard

John D.