For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

[Smith, McCoy]

Well, here's one lawyer that will quote another (who does post on this
list with some regularity):

"The BSD license even allows software to be taken from that public
commons and used in proprietary applications. There is no obligation for
the licensee to return anything to the commons. But despite the absence
of such an obligation, the BSD "gift of freedom" is being repaid over
and over by companies

and individuals who see more value to them in giving software away under
an academic license than in keeping it private."

 

http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch05.pdf

 

I'm curious as to what you mean by the "permission grant" that is
required to be included on every copy of the source code.  Do you mean
the statement that "Redistributions of source code must retain ... this
list of conditions"?  Perhaps you can explain how that constitutes a
"permission grant" (or what a "permission grant" is under copyright
law).

 

________________________________

From: Chris Travers [mailto:chris.travers at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 3:31 PM
To: License Discuss
Subject: Re: For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

 

 

On 9/24/07, Wilson, Andrew <andrew.wilson at intel.com> wrote:



If you are trying to convince people that your reading of BSD is
not extreme, citing Theo is perhaps not the best place to begin.


My main point is that the "license applies to all source code recipients
for our copyrights" interpretation is not at all uncommon.  Instead, I
believe it is your opinion which is extreme (based on perhaps deliberate
misinterpretations by people like RMS).  Furthermore, though IANAL, I
did note that the few lawyers who have addressed this question on this
list have given answers which back my argument here that the license
always follows the copyrighted element, and that it is a matter of what
you can safely extract rather than what license is wrapped around the
code. 

So far, I have not found any open source community project (single
vendor reference implementations don't count, so that rules out things
like Intel's ISCSI Reference Implementation) which interpret the license
the way you do. 

Since one of my projects depends on PostgreSQL and is under GPL 2+, I
contacted their core team so that I would be better aware of any license
conflicts, real or perceived.   They expressed concern that permission
removal under the GPL might violate the license, but suggested that this
wasn't their problem (IMO they are probably right on both counts). 

To paraphrase the PostgreSQL core team:  their position is that
commercial variants amount to enforcing the new copyrights that the
vendor adds and does not involve any sublicensing of the source code
under the BSD license itself. 

This is why the permission grant is required to be included on every
copy of the source code.  Again, this does not provide any obstacle to
enforcing one's own copyrights in arbitrary ways.  My suggestion is that
you find major BSD-licensed community projects (not single-vendor
reference implementations) which will agree that wrapping their code in
the GPL without adding any copyrighted elements is allowed. 

In short, I don't think your viewpoint is in line with how most projects
which use the license read it.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

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