Steve Lamb wrote:
Erik Persson wrote:As stated earlier, the BSD-licence requires, among other things, that: 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.But it does not require the code which uses it to be licensed under the same scheme and released under the same. If it were we'd not have the
No, it does not. Different licenses differ in their requirements.
arguments over bugs in Windows code as we'd be able to read it. Remember, Windows TCPIP stack uses BSD licensed code and they were nailed for not producing the notice. But it is still an open license in a closed product. The requirement of giving credit is more about codifying good manners. IE, if you write a report and quote another source in your report you cite the source. Same thing here, just gussied up in new lingo since lawyers and judges can't seem to apply law against similar concepts if the technology is different without the new lingo.
In what way does this matter? The BSD license does not allow you to do *whatever* you want with the code. Thus it is not fully free. It is more free than GPL code, but it is not *all* free. The same way gpl licensed code are more free than for example windows xp are. As you say, the windows tcpip stack uses bsd licensed code and WHERE NAILED for not producing a the notice. If the code was fully free, how could anyone be nailed in anyway when using it? The fact that the bsd license follows some sort of social contract on how to behave towards other programmers does not in anyway change the fact that there *are* requirements that must be met. Thus the code is not all free.
/ep