I have had talks a few times already with people about the GNU GPL (General Public License) versus the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) license.
Some were claiming that the GNU GPL is not really a free
software license, since 'software distributed under the GPL has
too many strings attached'. They were claiming that real free
software is software you can do anything you wish with, and the
GNU GPL doesn't let you do this, since it disallows you from
restricting further use of the software licensed under it.
To this I shall say a few things. In my opinion, free software
isn't defined as software you can do anything you wish with.
Free software is software which gives you the needed freedoms
to study, understand, make money of, redistribute, modify, use,
or not use. Freedom isn't defined as being able/allowed to do
anything you wish either. One can be very free, yet not be
allowed to kill, steal, rob, etc. A free country isn't one
which allows the citizens to do whatever they wish to do, even
if it means killing others. I would say that freedom is defined
as being free to do anything you wish to do *up to a certain
limit, where it hurts others*. (note also that the BSD license
does not allow you to do whatever you wish to do with software
governed by it either, for example, you are not allowed to
redistribute the license with modifications to the original
license text, only with additions to it, and those additions
may not contradict/void the existing ones)
If talking only in matters of freedom (because that's
what the term 'free software' is about), you could describe the
copyleft limit of the GPL disallowing you from further
restricting the license analogous to the restriction in common
free country laws that disallow you from killing others, by
killing others you are taking their freedom away from them. By
further restricting your modifications to software licensed
under the GPL you are taking away the freedom of users of your
modifications.
Now some claimed that you can't really limit freedom, neither with the GNU GPL nor with the BSD license, since the original software will still be available free with the BSD license. Now this would be true, in a static perfect world. But this is not the case. The state is not static, and the world is not perfect. Things change, and there's still quite some lack of software freedom. Achieving better freedom is a hard job, and a team work. If we've had already won the battle for freedom, and things will stay as they are, we wouldn't need copyleft. Therefore, our best chance to achieve freedom in the best freedom/time rate, is if we get help from others. By requiring others who make modifications to our free work to make their work free as well, we are encouraging others to help. The more people help, the faster we'll get freedom.
Others had the claim that some things are unreachable by
free software, and must be done by proprietary companies. I
tend to be really in favor of freedom, but I also consider some
amount of practical technicality, which if wouldn't be good
would decrease the value of our freedom - that is, I'm on both
the political/philosophical side, and the technical side. They
gave the examples of polished user interfaces,which are
typically done by proprietary companies. I don't agree with
this, but I'll assume it here for the sake of simplicity. I
think we could conclude that those things that might need to be
proprietary are things of the form of art/material, and not of
the form or information/law. Now we need to find some way to
take art/material as non-free things by nature, and make it
combine well with things that should be free like
information/law - software, while retaining the free software
free. This might require a new license.
If we succeed in doing this, we don't need the BSD license
here, since we have a new license satisfying the reasons some
prefer the BSD license for, and satisfying most of the reasons
some prefer the GNU GPL for.
If we fail in doing this, I'd still prefer the GNU GPL over
the BSD license, as I'd favor the freedom of most people over
the freedom of only the artists involved, and I'd prefer being
taken away some art of others than being taken away my
freedom.
So in short conclusion, both the GNU GPL and the BSD license have problems, none are perfect, and no license can be perfect, it can only strive to get as close as it can. As thus, I can't be described as a "GPL fanatic", because I do not believe the GNU GPL is perfect, and I recognize its problem. But I would like the problems with the BSD license to be also recognized by people, not to make them stop arguing in favor of the BSD license, but to remove some of the common arguments that come from not recognizing the problems of the BSD license.
$Id: gplbsd.html,v 1.6 2004/03/13 15:42:53 alsbergt Exp $