BSD family of licenses and consumer rights

Nobody is filing with the FTC because such a petition has no standing and will go nowhere. That's been explained to you many times over now. What part of that don't you understand?
 
How may you tell? Have you tried? If you haven't tried, you can't assume a thing. That's just proof you don't care, and may be acting like a troll.
 
Krush206 said:
It isn't hard to understand this matter.
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Sure?
Krush206 said:
If the copyright holders never intended the software to be usable in source form,
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"usable in source form" has no precise meaning.

Krush206 said:
they wouldn't explicitly write as such in the license.
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!?
Apache license is a lot more clear, but everybody knows that BSD is a permissive license. So, they wrote that you can freely use the source code, giving only back proper attributions.

Krush206 said:
It'd make zero sense to write this in the license and refuse to disclose the source code.
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Who is the subject? This sentence does not make sense. The copyright-holders disclosed the source, and they write it in the license. So, are you referring to SONY? SONY did not disclosed the source code, but they never write it in their license, because they are using a proprietary license.

Krush206 said:
There's nothing wrong or imprecise on this.
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Every line you wrote is imprecise, hence probably wrong.

I don't exclude you are a troll. Every your answer does not take in consideration what we are saying you. You are all over the places.
 
mer said:
OP bring your legal theory to your local authorities and when it gets decided and starts to affect other jurisdicitions maybe we have new data.
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Yeah. If the judge does accept that view, I'm afraid y'all would point as a failure of theirs, or that the Brazilian laws are flawed. Judges aren't error-proof.
 
6502 said:
It is easy to invent perpetual motion machine especially if you have little knowledge.
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You need a auto-regenerating atom surface to recover from displacement by friction. It may not use more energy than 1 impact generates. This way, a kinetic steel ball bounce system keeps on going forever. (In a vacuum)🤓
 
If the copyright holders made the sources available, why would sellers restrict this freedom?
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I had a talk to my father, a lawyer. Now I fully understand what he mean by this. If the copyright holders mean to make the sources available, sellers cannot restrict this freedom. The "use in source form" clause reflects the copyright holders' intent to make source code available as a freedom to all licensees. Sellers which redistribute BSD‑licensed software cannot lawfully restrict this freedom. If a copyright holder releases a work with the structural freedom to use and redistribute the source code, that freedom is an intrinsic legal characteristic of the software. The seller does not own the software; they are merely a licensee or a user who bundled it. Therefore, the seller lacks the legal authority to retroactively strip away these freedoms. Trying to conceal the license or package the software as a locked, exclusive, proprietary monopoly is a legal impossibility.
 
You are not listening. Nor understanding. Read the BSD License: "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted..."

Note that it says a few things:
(a) in source AND binary form. Meaning you can distribute it in either form.
(b) are permitted. Meaning redistribution is not required, it is permitted.

If you want to know what the "intent" is, you could have a talk with the people who wrote the first bit of BSD code. Most of them are still alive. But ultimately, for the law it doesn't matter so much what their intent was, since the text of the license itself is perfectly clear.
 
The point here, that your father also doesn't get, is that the BSD license does not intend for the software to be available at all. It makes no statement to that effect. None. Read it. There is nu "use in source form". It only mentions permission to redistribute in source form. Permission. Not an obligation. It is a right you have when you already possess a copy of the code. Apart from that, standard copyright law applies, giving Sony the right to keep modifications to themselves.
 
As for why I won't go to my local equivalent of the FTC. Software usage rights are governed by copyright. Default copyright, in broad strokes, leaves all rights with the copyright holder at their discretion. A software license stipulates which of those rights, as granted by copyright, a copyright holder delegates to third parties under which conditions. The baseline remains "no rights at all", with a few narrow exceptions. Beyond the permissions to redistribute and the conditions placed upon those, the BSD license grants zero rights. It also disclaims just about any liability imaginable including fitness for purpose. So you and I have no standing with the FTC or similar to claim rights that were never granted to us by anyone. The license does not speak of any intent. I'm not going to the Dutch ACM with a claim of intent that I pulled out of thin air and try to pin that on a company like Sony.
 
Krush206 said:
If the copyright holders mean to make the sources available, sellers cannot restrict this freedom.
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Exact. SONY is not restricting the freedom to use the FreeBSD code.

Krush206 said:
The "use in source form" clause reflects the copyright holders' intent to make source code available as a freedom to all licensees.
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Exact. Without a LICENSE, you cannot use their source code, because by default it is under COPYRIGHT. They said: you can freely use this code, but only if you credit me and you don't sue me if there are defects in it.

SONY is doing this, hence they can use the code.

Krush206 said:
Sellers which redistribute BSD‑licensed software cannot lawfully restrict this freedom.
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SONY is not doing this, with BSD licensed code. Their patches are under a different license.
Krush206 said:
If a copyright holder releases a work with the structural freedom to use and redistribute the source code, that freedom is an intrinsic legal characteristic of the software.
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True. FreeBSD code is forever free.
Krush206 said:
The seller does not own the software; they are merely a licensee or a user who bundled it.
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True.
Krush206 said:
Therefore, the seller lacks the legal authority to retroactively strip away these freedoms.
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True. But SONY never strip away any freedom from FreeBSD code.
Krush206 said:
Trying to conceal the license or package the software as a locked, exclusive, proprietary monopoly is a legal impossibility.
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True, but SONY is not doing anything of this with FreeBSD code. Only with their patches, and this is allowed by the BSD license.

The spirit of BSD license is: "I'm happy if my code is useful to you. In case, credit me, and promise to not sue me if there are bugs.".
 
ralphbsz said:
If you want to know what the "intent" is, you could have a talk with the people who wrote the first bit of BSD code. Most of them are still alive. But ultimately, for the law it doesn't matter so much what their intent was, since the text of the license itself is perfectly clear.
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Their intent is to make useful exercise of the clause. If they never intended to make the sources available, they wouldn't write this at all. This is teleological reasoning.
bvdw78 said:
The point here, that your father also doesn't get, is that the BSD license does not intend for the software to be available at all. It makes no statement to that effect. None. Read it. There is nu "use in source form". It only mentions permission to redistribute in source form. Permission. Not an obligation. It is a right you have when you already possess a copy of the code. Apart from that, standard copyright law applies, giving Sony the right to keep modifications to themselves.
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That's just proof bringing in the case to a judge is pointless. Y'all will keep on arguing the "use in source form" permission doesn't mean a thing.
bvdw78 said:
As for why I won't go to my local equivalent of the FTC. Software usage rights are governed by copyright. Default copyright, in broad strokes, leaves all rights with the copyright holder at their discretion. A software license stipulates which of those rights, as granted by copyright, a copyright holder delegates to third parties under which conditions. The baseline remains "no rights at all", with a few narrow exceptions. Beyond the permissions to redistribute and the conditions placed upon those, the BSD license grants zero rights. It also disclaims just about any liability imaginable including fitness for purpose. So you and I have no standing with the FTC or similar to claim rights that were never granted to us by anyone. The license does not speak of any intent. I'm not going to the Dutch ACM with a claim of intent that I pulled out of thin air and try to pin that on a company like Sony.
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You clearly don't understand how this relates to consumer law. You clearly don't understand what's a rule and interpretive rule. You don't need to go anywhere. You can file a complaint online.
 
I understand exactly how my local consumer law works. No consumer is going to get the right to source code from Sony by trying to coast on top of the BSD license. The BSD license grants you two permissions on top of standard copyright, on a bunch of code that you already posses. If you don't already possess the code, then that's *YOUR* problem to fix. The BSD license does not address that at all. No obligation exists for anyone there, only permissions.
 
Krush206 please see my post and answer it.

docs.freebsd.org

FreeBSD Licensing Policy

docs.freebsd.org docs.freebsd.org
opensource.org

The 2-Clause BSD License

Note: This license has also been called the “Simplified BSD License” and the “FreeBSD License”. See also the 3-clause BSD License. Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDE…
opensource.org opensource.org
opensource.org

The 3-Clause BSD License

Note: This license has also been called the “New BSD License” or “Modified BSD License”. See also the 2-clause BSD License. Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> R…
opensource.org opensource.org

See these three links.

Can you grasp what is written there? It is a legal language for "derived product must not drop this copyright statement".

Nothing more, nothing less.

Everything you write here is pure conjecture based on misunderstanding of some basic things.

Krush206 said:
You clearly don't understand how this relates to consumer law.
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I am not the target of your post, however I fully understand what is the relation to laws, regulations and consumers as I ship proprietary, closed source, very much paid products, not only for general consumption but certified for both government and dual-use. We have people on the payroll exclusively for resolving licensing 3rd party stuff.

Your story is fantasy. It doesn't happen. I don't know the local laws of Brazil but this claim of yours is preposterous. There is FreeBSD 5.x code in macOS today, legacy of Darwin. What do you expect Apple to support your FreeBSD 5 affairs?

What makes the matters really funny is BSD/MIT license were formed to make them commercial friendly. It is the original "exposure" license. The original author gets nothing, but some exposure in technical circles. It is what it is and people are using it for what it is, you enter here and put a totally different story. About some consumers. That has no point.

Even worse, you don't respond to direct questions like this one, that multiple people put in front, explain using quotes of 2/3 clause BSD license your interpretation.
 
I've zero time to respond to bullshit. Again, I've done my part. I filed an interpretive rule to SENACON, and this was formally accepted. Though it's under review, the first steps succeeded.

The interpretation of "it's only a permission" is one method to reason of the law. The literal interpretation is the simplest method of reasoning. There are other methods of reasoning. Teleological reasoning is complex and intuitive. You don't judge the book by the title. You read the entire book to understand the meaning behind.
If the copyright holders made the sources available, why would sellers restrict this freedom?
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This is a teleological reasoning.
 
The copyright holder in the case of FreeBSD makes sources available, that much is indeed true. What you're missing here is the fact that they do not do this out of obligation, nor does the BSD license obligate any other party to do so. The FreeBSD Project chooses to publish.

Again: a granted permission does not automatically create an obligation. Ever. Under any jurisdiction that I'm aware of, and I'm aware of quite a few. Sony, Apple etc. have the permission to publish both source and binary versions of the BSD-licensed code they're sitting on. They are not in any way obligated to do so by copyright law. So that's the copyright angle closed firmly.

Consumer law governs the agreement between you and the likes of Apple and Sony, and it concerns the question of whether what you paid for is reasonably fit for its advertised purpose. Can you play games on a Playstation? Can you surf the web and use applications on your Macbook? Yes? Cool. End of story, bye-bye. That's the consumer law angle of this story closed.

While you may deeply believe in the philosophy of total open-source software, the law does not enforce philosophies. It enforces specific legal texts. The BSD license text explicitly permits what Sony is doing. Attempting to use consumer law to override a copyright holder's explicit licensing terms will not work. If you continue to push this petition with SENACON, it will be rejected, and you risk being flagged for bad-faith litigation or administrative abuse if you try to force a government agency to act on a legally impossible demand.

Here's one for your noodle to contemplate: should the FreeBSD Project ever cease to publish anything at all but continue to legally exist, you *STILL* would not have any standing whatsoever to claim either binaries or sources from them or anyone else.
 
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bvdw78 said:
The copyright holder in the case of FreeBSD makes sources available, that much is indeed true. What you're missing here is the fact that they do not do this out of obligation, nor does the BSD license obligate any other party to do so. The FreeBSD Project chooses to publish.
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... or using a "teleological" reasoning: BSD code is a donation of code, while GPL code is share-a-like.

As other implied in this thread, probably SONY contributed back to FreeBSD code with patches and/or money and/or paid works. So, the fact that BSD code can be used also in private projects is an intended outcome, because it can facilitate the usage in real world, where some company must profit using business-plan not compatible with GPL code. EDIT: hence the "interpretative rule" can go against the real intentions of the copyright holders.
 
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Krush206 said:
I've zero time to respond to bullshit. Again, I've done my part. I filed an interpretive rule to SENACON, and this was formally accepted. Though it's under review, the first steps succeeded.

The interpretation of "it's only a permission" is one method to reason of the law. The literal interpretation is the simplest method of reasoning. There are other methods of reasoning. Teleological reasoning is complex and intuitive. You don't judge the book by the title. You read the entire book to understand the meaning behind.

This is a teleological reasoning.
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Not to be too harsh, but there's a reason why the US is basically the only developed country where that sort of thing flies. And also why it's the only developed country that I can think of that's right now falling down to developing world status as my fellow countrymen obsess over morality purity tests on candidates that might actually upend the status quo in favor of actual democracy.

No good can possibly come of changing the way the license works for just one country. If it were a bigger country like the US or region like the EU there's some possibility that the block is large enough to get an actual change, more likely though you'll just have a bunch of people pirating the free software and any projects using the code to either move offshore or refuse to distribute where you are.
 
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The only way this is ever going to fly, is through some utterly unhinged right-to-repair ruling by a judge who doesn't understand the subject matter. I'm not going to file for that though. It'll be appealed right out of the ball park.
 
bvdw78 said:
Consumer law governs the agreement between you and the likes of Apple and Sony, and it concerns the question of whether what you paid for is reasonably fit for its advertised purpose. Can you play games on a Playstation? Can you surf the web and use applications on your Macbook? Yes? Cool. End of story, bye-bye. That's the consumer law angle of this story closed.
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Again, you clearly don't understand how this relates to consumer law. You clearly don't understand what's a rule and interpretive rule. The definition of unfair or deceptive acts or practices is broad. Do your research. Search the Legal Library. Search the eCFR.
 
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