Despite being quite old, this post is interesting. You might be surprised on how I landed here…. I googles “MIT license in a nutshell”. :)

First result was this.

I tend to prefer a GNU license for one simple reason: PEOPLE DIE. If it turns out that someone takes a source code, creates a much better version investing lots of time and effort into it, but never releases back his changer, and then one day he/she DIES, then all that good work goes down the drain.

We as a species should stop having to re-invent the wheel every few years.

Best regards,
FC

Yes, BSD lets a programmer add to a piece of software and keep all the code to himself.

The next user has less freedom because the changed/improved code is now closed.

The GPL lets a programmer add to a piece of software and release the code.

The next user has more freedom because the changed/improved code is still open.

Comparing BSD to someone with their feet chopped off is not very accurate.

Why not just compare it to smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans if you want to be gruesome?

It’s really more of a balance.

BSD is more free to the programmer or company who uses the code next after it is written.

GPL if less free the the programmer or company who use the code next, but more free to the next programmer, company, or person, and the next, and the next, et cetera.

How about a better analogy ?

GPL is like a play based on The Odyssey by Homer.

GPL is free as Homer or Shakespeare.
GPL is free as boy falls in love with girl movie plot.

It’s free and always will be. I can perform it at my local theater and even charge for it, but so can anyone else.

BSD is free then goes closed is like O’ Brother Where Art Thou, which is based on The Odyssey.

BSD is free as O’ Brother Where Art Thou.
BSD is free as boy who fakes his death a lot, goes to funerals for fun, falls in love with old woman, and finds a purpose in life.

Harold and Maude (1971)
It’s a great movie, check it out.

GPL encourages cooperation.

BSD encourages competition.

If you don’t want your code to become GPL, don’t mix it with other people’s GPL code.
Use BSD code or write your own.

If you like BSD use BSD.

If you like GPL use GPL.

What bothers me, is that such drivel comes from someone who is supposedly an editor of an alternative OS news site.

Be careful there, Kitty. There is a reason why this website is my blog, and NOT OSNews. It is very important to realize that on OSNews– I’m a managing editor with all the responsiblities that comes with it. However, outside of that, I’m just Thom. And I’m someone who has strong opinions, and I’m not afraid of expressing those opinions (notice the Palestinian flag in the sidebar?).

Once Adam Scheinberg, OSNews’ astonoshing web guy, proposed the idea of us having our blogs at OSNews.com. My response was a resound ‘NO’, because I don’t want my blog one mm closer to OSNews, due to my strong opinions.

In other words, don’t read this blog as being the blog of ‘OSNews’ managing editor’, but read it as being Thom Arvid Holwerda’s blog. Please :).

GPL has worked very well for important projects, and was devised as a tool for a goal.

Obviously. What I was trying to make fun of, is the idea that the GPL is somehow ‘more free’ than the BSD/MIT licenses.

As for me, I prefer the BSD/MIT license over anything else, because freedom should not have clauses that limit that freedom. It just doesn’t add up. If I buy ten square metres of carpet, I should have the liberty lay it out on the roof if I so desire– I don’t want the maker of the carpet forcing me to use it on the floor inside only.

>And OSNews is NOT an “alternative OS news site”. It’s an OS news site.
I stand corrected. Let me reformulate to the very same point then:
“the editor of an OS news site that nowadays reports a such great amount of news about niche and alternative OSs should know better, and realize that (with licenses) we’re talking about tools for a goal”

Licenses are important tools. And the beauty of tools is that you can use them in many ways. You can use them for a goal dictated by ideology, or as in your ex-fiancee’s case, for entirely different goals. That’s up to you, though of course some licences, like GPL, were explicitly designed with some ideological goal in mind.

>The GPL has some practical usage in the world, but in my opinion, for the large >quantity of code out there, I would prefer the BSD license too.
The truth is that I have no idea what would have happened if, let’s say, Linus had chosen a BSD-style license. He’s a practical man, and he said several times that he chose open source because it was a model that he thought would have been good for the develompent of what he cared for. I’m not aware of why he specifically chose GPL, if he wanted to make sure that every contribution had to come back to the public or for some entirely different reason.
My impression is that once the Linux phenomenon had grown enough, with a BSD license, distro makers would have been tempted to develop inhouse exclusive features and use them to try to kill off each other. Think the recent “XGL development behind closed doors” turmoil, multiplied for every distro with a development team out there. Much reinventing of the wheel, even less standardization, etc. But basically, we’ll never be able to know.

>Really, the BSD License offers the most freedom as all that has to be >done is credit left in the code you take, but you are not forced to release >your changes.
You see, this is my whole point: let’s keep it to practical terms. The moment you start talking about ‘freedom’ in abstract terms, you’re talking about hot air. Freedom is a much abused word, but let’s not reduce it to ‘freedom = lack of rules’ because that would be demeaning. The FSF states what it means for ‘Free Software’ in terms of the rights of a final user who wants to be able to modify the code, and thus what a licence should guarantee in these specific terms, for those specific goals.
There’s freedom in anarchy, but when that becomes chaos and prevarication what happens of the freedom of the individual? Capitalism teaches us the beauty of the free market, but when it leads to a monopoly, what happens of the freedom of the consumers?
Freedom is just a word, like beauty or intelligence or moral, until you put it in a proper context and with real subjects. Until then, it’s silly pretending to know it or measure it.

He is not supposedly an editor. He IS an editor.
And OSNews is NOT an “alternative OS news site”. It’s an OS news site. The fact that many of its news items happen to be for alternative OSes is completely beside the point. OSNews does not discriminate between OSes, while its readers do.

>GPL has worked very well for important projects
> and was devised as a tool for a goal

My ex-fiance released his x86 assembler under the GPL because he did not want to see his work getting used by a company that would never release the code back. But he didn’t do that for GPL’s sake and Free Software’s sake or because of their ideology. He did that because he selfishly didn’t want his work to be used by others who could make money in a market that he could not. He was driven by selfishism and frustration, not by love for the people and the code.

The GPL has some practical usage in the world, but in my opinion, for the large quantity of code out there, I would prefer the BSD license too.