BSD family of licenses and consumer rights

But Sir, the horse, while dead, has not yet been beaten into constituent molecules. May we flog it for a while longer?
Wrong. We are switching from the "licensed consumer" era to the "franchisee prospective consumer" era. They are "teleolinked" in an "interpretative" way from the clear "trollintentions" of the original copyright holders, which donated their code with the hidden intention to stole back all subsequent customization, because we all known that Berkeley is not a city but a GNU! /s
 
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Damn. 148 posts in and they still can’t grasp permissive licensing. I think it’s about time to close this troll thread.
It kind of contradicts its own reason to exist. If everyting is free to use, modify and redistribute, what's the purpose of any license on it?
 
It kind of contradicts its own reason to exist. If everyting is free to use, modify and redistribute, what's the purpose of any license on it?
Because if you publish a piece of code without a license, the Berne Convention, "requires protection for all creative works in a fixed medium be automatic, and last for at least 50 years after the author's death for any work".

So by default, no one can use it, because it is under copyright. The BSD LICENSE lists the terms you had to follow for using the source code, that are mainly an attribution. i.e. citation.

If you respect these terms you can reuse the code. The license is no viral. Your modification can be released under different terms.
 
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It kind of contradicts its own reason to exist. If everyting is free to use, modify and redistribute, what's the purpose of any license on it?

...to keep it open source.

The difference is there is no restrictions on derivative work.

This isn't rocket science.
 
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It kind of contradicts its own reason to exist. If everyting is free to use, modify and redistribute, what's the purpose of any license on it?
The point of it is that the software itself doesn't change licenses just because it's in your possession and included in your product. Except in rare cases the original source code is out there somewhere, it's whatever source that, in this case Sony, added to that which isn't required to be provided. And, in large part to prevent the software from having its licensed changes those files have to retain the license. It also somewhat protects against somebody getting the source and then pretending that it belongs to them and send a bunch of cease and desist letters to other people using the code that they got.

Honestly, people make this stuff far more complicated than it really is. The BSD license is a license that puts about as little restrictions on its use as possible. Sure, there are even less restrictive options like literally declaring it to be a part of the public domain and certain types of Creative Commons licenses, but it's pretty close to unencumbered.
 
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...to keep it open source.

The difference is there is no restrictions on derivative work.

This isn't rocket science.
Is it relevant without being a public system? I'm running a modified FreeBSD in several stores. It's not published. They have to call me at problems. It also doesn't contain any license documents and isn't registered somewhere as property. Doing this since 7.0 or so. Advantage is that nobody knows what I'm talking about anyway when it gets technical.
I don't think it makes any difference in my case but it's probably different if it was a public downloadable system. I might add a disclaimer for people destroying their computers by using it and then blame me. 😆
 
You are not listening. Nor understanding. Read the BSD License: "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted..."
Search the eCFR for "representation."
If we're lucky, I'd be worried that the judge does buy that nonsense and it just means that all these products get yanked from the market over something that wasn't in the license to begin with.
The FTC also works with competition and consumer protection agencies around the world to promote cooperation and sound policy approaches. The FTC has built strong relationships with its counterparts abroad, and helps countries around the world to develop and enhance their competition and consumer protection programs.
 
You can find rules for even the pettiest occasions and situations.

Since nobody is giving a damn, I'm filing a petition to FTC.
 
Doesn't matter, it doesn't change the fact that nothing about the BSD license requires further sharing of the code that you're using. The FTC has absolutely no right or statutory requirement to get involved in this. That's doubly so right now with Trump being in control of the agency and them in general not being terribly interested in upholding customer rights. Not that a different President would lead to a different result as there's simply no leg to stand on here. The code that Sony has used is still out there, we can still access and use that, and the code that they themselves wrote without contributing back is not required to be contributed back.
 
Is it relevant without being a public system? I'm running a modified FreeBSD in several stores. It's not published. They have to call me at problems. It also doesn't contain any license documents and isn't registered somewhere as property. Doing this since 7.0 or so. Advantage is that nobody knows what I'm talking about anyway when it gets technical.
I don't think it makes any difference in my case but it's probably different if it was a public downloadable system. I might add a disclaimer for people destroying their computers by using it and then blame me. 😆

In reality the system is already stating its license. If you have not removed it, there is a COPYRIGHT file in the source code distribution, and each source code file reports the used license in the header. Some part of the FreeBSD system should list the used license to the users. Every tool of the system is doing the same. So your users are informed about the license. In this case, for changing the license, into a proprietary one, you should modify the COPYRIGHT file, and the messages of the binary. So it is a rather active and explicit action. Otherwise, defaults of the project apply.

In case you want maintain the BSD license: for minor changes like fixing typos, minor bug-fixes, small improvements to documentation, made from you, it is not important that you put yourself in the list of copyright-holders; for substantial modifications, in an ideal world, you should add your name to the list of contributors, in each file you have modified.

But not all projects have for each source file, the list of copyright-holders. Many projects derives the list of copyright-holders from the repository history and/or some CONTRIBUTORS file.
 
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