Miscellaneous > The Lounge
stealing from GPL?
voidmain:
I guess you guys didn't read the thread. They *DO* include some open source code in their OS. They use at least SOME BSD code. All of the executables I list above have open source BSD code in them and I am sure that they use it in other areas. Now, that does not break the BSD license, they are perfectly legal in "stealing" BSD code and including it in Windows. Remember, open source != GPL. GPL is one of many licenses used in open source, BSD is another, X11 is another, etc. Microsoft only has a beef with GPL because they can't steal it, distribute/sell it and claim they wrote it without including the source for said code. Now they *can* include it in their code as long as they don't release that particular code without including the source code. They can freely use GPL code in house for development as long as they don't distribute it.
I found at least 5 EXE files in C:\WINNT on Windows 2000 that have the BSD copyright in them.
[EDIT] Where did my post go that listed all the EXE files??? From memory it was something like, FTP.EXE, RSH.EXE, NSLOOKUP.EXE, and a few others...
[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
Calum:
that's right, the original X Windows has that licence too, you can take the source for free, then change it, release it as binary only and charge a mint for it, if you want.
I think that's grossly unfair. No wonder Microsoft likes that idea so much, they don't need to hire so many developers, developers, developers, developers.
I prefer the GPL. It seems like progress to me. Out of interest, are the newer BSDs GPL? or are they all under the BSD licence as well?
choasforages:
im pretty sure that all BSD's use the bsd license, they all use bsd code and have to keep it under the bsd license, im not sure but one could always read through the licensing info of the bsd cdroms.
Calum:
do they have to keep it BSD? i thought the whole point of the BSD licence was that you could release the modified code under a different licence, that, i thought, was the major difference between it and the GPL (and the reason the GPL came into being). I may need to go and look that up now...
voidmain:
BSD license and GPL are two different "heavyweight" open source licenses. They each have their own philosophy. Generally people in the BSD camp do not like the restrictiveness of the GPL and people in the GPL camp do not like the "stealability" of the BSD license. One is not likely to merge with the other. At least anytime within the next 20 years....
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