On Tuesday 23 September 2008 00:47:46 Raj Mathur wrote: > On Tuesday 23 Sep 2008, Sandip Bhattacharya wrote: > > [snip] > > At the risk of a flame war debating between GPL and BSD licences, > > this is exactly the difference between the two licences, IMO of > > course. > > > > * GPL restricts complete freedom, by putting in conditions, for the > > higher goal of software freedom for the society. > > * BSD (w/o advert. clause) strives for complete freedom. They share > > the same goals as GPL - software freedom, but give further freedom > > to users - the choice to use whatever licence they want for their > > derivatives. > > GPL and similar strong copyleft licences actually aim to protect the > rights of the users, by ensuring that the users always have options > to enhance, modify and adapt the package to their needs. > > BSD and similar licences aim to protect the rights of the > programmers, by ensuring that programmers can do whatever they want > with the software, up to the extent of taking freedom away from their > users (and even other programmers).
It is always confusing in such discussions if we use the same terms to mean different things. If you consider the following definition of the terms: * Author being the person who wrote the original program. * User being the person who has obtained the program and is using it. * Community being the other users who will use the improved program in the future. Those who use it now in its present form are not affected in any way by either of these licences. * Freedom in this context is the freedom to benefit from the improvements fed back into the software by it's users. Rewriting your text now: > GPL and similar strong copyleft licences actually aim to protect the > rights of the community, by ensuring that the community always have > options to enhance, modify and adapt the package to their needs. > BSD and similar licences aim to protect the rights of the > users, by ensuring that users can do whatever they want > with the software, up to the extent of taking freedom away from the > community. Raj, does it feel as if I am putting words in your mouth? :-P In other words, GPL says that "I am being nice to you. It is now your duty to be nice to others .. or else. I want a society where everybody has to be nice to everybody. No exceptions.". BSD says, "I have been nice to you. It is your call whether you would like to be nice to others. I will remain nice to you regardless.". - Sandip _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
