BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

[Chris Travers]

On 10/15/07, Alexander Terekhov <alexander.terekhov at gmail.com> wrote:

> Eben says that the power comes from "historical community practice".
> He has a PhD in History so he surely knows what he is talking about
> when it comes to History. He also says that no way should we try to
> disrupt that power because that would hurt proprietary division of the
> global information technology industry.
>
> http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/gpl-non-gpl-collaboration.pdf

A few points:

1)  I am not sure that Eben is the sole or even primary author of that work.
2)  The author does *not* say that you can distribute BSD works under
any license and actually advises against it.
3)  Instead, it simply says that BSD licensed works can be
incorporated into other works licensed under more restrictive terms.

Note, however, that this does not conflict with the view (held by many
developers of BSDL works) that any implied sublicensing grant does
*not* apply to merely redistributing the original work or a portion
thereof.  I.e. that I can't take PostgreSQL, BIND, or OpenBSD and
distribute mere literal or nonliteral cpies of them while changing the
license to, say, the GPL v3.  But that I *can* license my own
copyrights under any terms I wish, and sublicense the software in that
process.

IANAL, but that seems to be *the* most common interpretation of the
BSDL/ISC/etc. licenses that I can find.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers