It seems a bit hypocritical to extoll the greater freedom offered by the BSD license (as its supporters do), and then look askance at companies who use the rights granted to them. The dual-licensing model of MySQL is only possible because the GPL withholds certain rights from the users. It has always struck me as ironic that the primary use of the GPL in the business world is to exert control over customers and require them to pay licensing fees for uses outside the GPL. Without that option, the other business models available are pure support contracts (which don’t make for terribly compelling marketing material), or adding value to the open source code before passing it on to the customer, so they feel they’re getting something worth paying for.
By Allison Randal succinctly describes what many people are challenged about by the GPL vs BSD, where the BSD license appears to provide greater freedom.
Greater freedom? Different types of freedom, protecting different rights important to different people.
The BSD is pure freedom, ripe for abuse and innovation.
The GPL is pragmatic. It keeps everyone on the same playing field.
2 Comments
What I love about the GPL is that it defines a set of rules for a community using and developing a piece of software. The BSD license is based on the idea that having no rules is a better way to live.
Its kind of like the difference between freedom in Canada and freedom in Darfur. Sure, if I wanted to ride around on a horse with an machete in my hand I’d rather live in Darfur, but I like being able to walk home safely at night.
(yes, that analogy is an exaggeration)
Ian, I like your analogy!
It reminds me of the likely equally inappropriate analogy that solidified in my mind while I was listing to a radio program in the travel crawl of commuting in Toronto (2000-2004). One of the program’s guests mentioned how our democratic political systems, including modern day Germany’s, have protections in place against a fascist government changing the rules even if they were elected under other pretences (or that very pretence) — not that such a political group would respect them.
I think it may have been then when I changed me from the armed chaired, idealist “BSD is better” to preferring and participating in GPL’d software development.
More recently, Mark Pilgrim wizened me to one of the “nuanced reasons to prefer straight-gpl-licensed codeâ€, “[derivatives] of straight-gpl programs must themselves be straight-gpl, thus ensuring license compatibilityâ€. I wrote briefly previously about Open Source License Proliferation