Feature:GPL vs BSD

Joe Drew wrote in to give us his perspective on a debate that is quite the rage these days: the BSD License vs the GPL. He has written up a summary of why he prefers the GPL, and I think it might be worth a read- especially if you have been wondering about this stuff (and according to my INBOX, many of you are).

The following was written by Slashdot reader Joe Drew

The GPL vs the BSD License: A GPL advocate's perspective

Recently, there has been a lot of anti-GPL sentiment in the BSD camps. A cynic would say that they are simply jealous over the GPL's (and Linux') success; however, with a careful examination of reality one notices that the BSD license is no less, perhaps more successful than the GPL, and the BSD variants are thriving in their own niches. So why the anti-GPL sentiment? Personally, I believe it's two things.

1. BSD advocates are maybe just a little, tiny bit bitter over the fact that Linux is perceived to be more successful than BSD. Everyone with his head screwed on straight knows that neither of these two factions are going away, but nonetheless, there may be some resentment there. By creating awareness of their OSen, they can draw attention to it.
2. Some BSD advocates mistake the anti-proprietary slant to the GPL as pro-communist or anti-capitalist, both of which are blatantly foolish and incorrect.

The GPL exists because Richard Stallman, rms, wanted to ensure the freedom of software forever. Free Software, of all its types, thrived then and thrives now; however, the GPL is one of the only licenses which guarantees that Free Software cannot become non-Free. This doesn't mean that money can't exchange hands over Free Software, only that it can't become proprietary.

When using the BSD license, your software is just as Free as when you use the GPL. However, a company can take your code, incorporate it into its own proprietary product, and (depending on the type of BSD license, with or without advertising clause) you can receive no compensation for your work, perhaps not even credit. If that's exactly what you want, then the BSD license is for you. However, it seems just a little bit dangerous for a lot of Free Software authors.

This isn't possible with the GPL. It's always there, blatantly in your face, telling you ``You may not use this code in proprietary ventures.'' If a company takes your work, repackages it and sells the repackaging and service for it, your code is still available. It isn't legally permissible for them to take your code, incorporate it into another product and sell that product.

The BSD license is a fine license. It does exactly what it's meant to do, which is get the software out there. For a lot of Free Software authors, that's exactly what they want. However, for some people, that's not good enough -- they want to give everyone the freedom to do with the code what they will, but they don't want to give people the right to make the code proprietary.

The GPL is very popular, and very effective, because it protects people's Free Software, while still allowing them the freedom to do with it essentially whatever they want. Many people make a living selling and creating Free Software; this number will only increase as its benefits become more publicised and well-known.

The bottom line is, the GPL is not anti-commercial or anti- capitalistic; it is only anti-proprietary. The BSD license, on the other hand, is very unrestrictive, and allows proprietary knockoffs. Which you choose depends on what you need and what you value. There's nothing more to it than that.

The flip side

The flip side of your argument is that the GPL is less free than the BSD license. The BSD license retains the freedom to incorporate the code into proprietary products, and that's a freedom which the GPL does not allow.

The *real* disagreement between the two camps is over whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

The software is free, not the people.

I was all set to write a long essay in response, but most of the readers here would probably just appreciate a summary:

The GPL license is conducive to liberating software.

The BSD license is conducive to liberating people.

With the GPL license, the software maintains more of the freedom than the programmers who work on it.

With the BSD licenses, the programmers maintain more of the freedom with what they are allowed to do with derivative code.

Re:The flip side

The orginal author of the GPLed code still has full copyright of it, correct? And they can change the copyright on any subsequent version (i.e. they can make it proprietary in the next version but can't stop people from distrubiting the GPLed code.)

As such, any company that really wants to use GPLed code in a proprietary product would have to get the permission of the author, who could in turn demans payment, royalties, credit, or something else.

It seems to me like the GPL protects the interests of the coder as well as the general public.

Re:Au contraire

I'm the author of this piece.

I sort of wish Rob had told me he was going to post it :) ; I would have reviewed it and changed this. I meant it to say that it cannot be incorporated into a proprietary product and sold - and I am very aware of the difference - but unfortunately I didn't write it that way in its current incarnation.

Promulgating Code vs. Promulgating Standards

Well, as usual, most folks appear to have missed one of the key points that makes the BSD license do so much good for the world. The BSD license, by allowing people to use its code in commerical products, promotes commercial products following open standards.

The classic example is TCP/IP. There are a lot of commercial products out there using the Berkeley TCP/IP stack, and one of the big reasons for that is that it's cheaper than developing their own protocol stack or even buying one. The value we see from this is the network effect; that a device communicates using the Berkeley TCP/IP stack rather than Novell's IPX stack or Microsoft's networking stack benefits all of us, because we can much more easily communicate with it (even, perhaps, in ways that the author did not intend).

Open standards are even more important to freedom for computer users than open source. (Having source code is nice, but it's not much good if it doesn't permit you to interoperate with other platforms out there. Linux is popular because it talks to other computers.) Therefore, I'd say that the Berkeley license has done more than any other licence to bring us to the state today where we have a lot of freedom in our computing choices.

cjs

Re:Why do we need licenses at all?

Access to the original P cannot be restricted - you are correct. The whole BSD/GPL debate really comes down to who gets the benefit of the changes made from P->P+.

In the BSD world, the author of the + section can distribute both P and + together, without source code, and only that author receives the benefit of the + changes. Everybody else has to reinvent the wheel if they wanted to get P+ code and didn't want to get the + from the + author.

In the GPL world, the author of the + section must distribute the original P with source code if they distribute it at all, and if the + code incorporates code from P, then they must distribute the + source code as well. Then everyone can include the + code in their GPL'd projects, which is a benefit for them. Of course, the author may not make as much money (if any) distributing a GPL'd P+ as they would have under the BSD license.

The GPL has a very specific view of what is good for the software world: software distributed with GPL'd source code. Software distributed with GPL'd source code leads to more of the same, which was the FSF's goal. Of course, if you don't like this goal (if you prefer proprietary software or, as another poster pointed out, other free software licenses) then you aren't going to like the GPL or its goals.

Too biased

I'm a GPL partisan myself, but I think that when someone sets out to write an article, they should decide whether they are going to examine both sides of the argument or just advocate one side.

This article is GPL advocacy, not a genuine look at "both sides".

Though it's true that the BSD license allows code written freely to become proprietary, history has shown that companies that do take advantage of the BSD license have a tendency to give back to the community even though it is not compulsory.

The BSDites argue that the GPL's giant "no-no" clause regarding proprietary rights scares companies off. You know what? They are right. Although we've seen alot of free software emerge lately from the corporate world, almost all of the contributors have opted OUT of the GPL.

I think that both licenses have their place, and ultimately I think you'll find GPL'ed software running somewhere below BSD'ed software as a common support infrastructure. The spiffy "add-ons" and extras may be open sourced, but I don't think the corporate world is ready to accept relinquishing the rights to their intellectual property.

GPL vs. BSD

The BSD is a very concise and free license that allows the licenser to allow the source code to be free and also be availible to companies provided they follow the following conditions:


1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.


The BSD license is also much, much less complicated:


$ wc -l bsd-style-copyright
27 bsd-style-copyright
$ wc -l /usr/src/gnu/COPYING
339 /usr/src/gnu/COPYING


The BSD license has far fewer catches and companies that are interested in being able to profit off of their product will be happily able to integrate that into their source code provided the integration and distribution goes under the above conditions.

There are a few `mistakes' that have gotten out somehow that the BSD license is not what it is. Here they are:

• The BSD license allows a company to make a small change to the code and say they wrote it.
  
  This is not true. The original author is the one who gets the credit for it, not the person to make the last change.
  
  
• The BSD license is less free than the GPL.
  
  The BSD license allows for distribution with less catches and it allows the licenser (usually the author) to decide whether or not he or she wants to distribute the source code.

Hopefully this clears up some of the misunderstandings that people on the GPL side may be having.