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Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details. Two of the most common free software licenses are the BSD license and the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). Whereas software released with either of these licenses is considered "free", the licenses differ substantially in the way the source code can be used. The relative merits and shortcomings of either is a common cause of flame wars. Image File history File links Circle-question. ...
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This article is about free software as defined by the sociopolitical free software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ...
The BSD license is a permissive license and is one of the most widely used free software licenses. ...
The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ...
This article is about the Internet meaning of the word flaming. For other meanings, and meanings of the word flame, see Flame. ...
The main difference between the two licenses is that revised BSD licenses are permissive while the GPL is copyleft. The GPL requires the software to always be free, including derivative works, by requiring the software to always be licensed under the GPL. The BSD license only requires acknowledging the original authors, and imposes few restrictions on how the source code may be used. As a result, BSD code can be more easily integrated into or released entirely as proprietary software. For instance, parts of Mac OS X and the IP stack in Microsoft Windows are derived from BSD-licensed software. The reversed c in a full circle is the copyleft symbol (left). ...
In copyright law, a derivative work is an artistic creation that includes aspects of work previously created and copyright protected. ...
Source code (commonly just source or code) is any series of statements written in some human-readable computer programming language. ...
Proprietary software is software that has restrictions on using and copying it, usually enforced by a proprietor. ...
Mac OS X (official IPA pronunciation: ) is a line of proprietary, graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Computer, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently shipping Macintosh computers. ...
The internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implement the protocol stack on which the Internet and most commercial networks run. ...
Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary operating systems by Microsoft. ...
Code licensed under the BSD license can be relicensed under the GPL (is "GPL-compatible") without securing the consent of all original authors. Code under the GPL cannot be relicensed under the BSD license without securing the consent of all original authors, since the BSD license does not require the source code to be always freely available. The Free Software Foundation provides the GNU Lesser General Public License that differs by having a weaker copyleft clause concerning linking of libraries between non-copyleft (proprietary or permissive) licensed code. GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ...
Supporters of the BSD license argue against the copyleft nature of the GPL. They argue that the BSD license is more free than the GPL, because it grants the right to do nearly anything with the source code, second only to software in the public domain, and that the nature of the BSD license has encouraged the inclusion of well-developed standard code into proprietary software. BSD supporters feel that the GPL takes away fundamental rights from the users, forcing them to write their own software for tasks that are covered by GPL software if they wish to redistribute it with a non-GPL-compatible license. The reversed c in a full circle is the copyleft symbol (left). ...
The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...
Existing BSD-licensed software distributions tend to avoid including software licensed under the GPL in the core operating system, except as a last resort when alternatives are non-existent or vastly less capable, such as with GCC. The OpenBSD project, for example, has acted to remove GPL-licensed tools in favour of BSD-licensed alternatives, some newly written and some adapted from older code. A software distribution is a installer of a specific software (or a collection of multiple, even an entire operating system) , already compiled and configured. ...
The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ...
OpenBSD is a freely available Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. ...
GPL supporters claim that mandating that derivative works remain GPL-licensed fosters the growth of free software, as developers who use GPL code have to share their improvements with the community. GPL supporters claim the derivative work license requirement is more a form of power than a freedom,[1] and that the BSD license allows people to "hoard" the work of others without having to give anything back. Software hoarding is the creation of proprietary software products based on free software code. ...
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