Re: bsd license question

[Damien Miller <djm@mindrot.org>]

Kurt B. Kaiser wrote:
> The BSD license promotes wide use of the software, including
> commercial applications.  It carries the risk that the core team can
> be bought out and the project taken private, thereby cutting out the
> users and even those original developers who weren't 'invited' or who
> chose not to go private.

You don't understand copyright law.

A company may buy ownership of a free project, it may even hire the
entire development team and turn them all to working on a closed variant
of the original project..

They *cannot* retrospectively rescind the license for published software
unless the license has terms to allow them to do so (and even then you
could probably argue). Copyright law simply doesn't allow it.

So all this talk about how the GPL "protects" people from companies
buying open code and "locking it up" is just propaganda. It just can't
happen - the original code will be there for anyone to use, regardless
of license.

The GPL does not provide one additional iota of protection if the
copyright holders of a project sell their rights.

-d