On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:48 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
Patents and profiting from patents is an unrelated discussion to copyright-based licensing.
Patents came about a bit before copyright. Today patents talk about licensing, and copyright talks about patent. They're not exactly inseparable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent
But there are plenty of people out there willing to Embrace Extend Extinguish, which GPL protects against (patent clauses and copyleft) and BSD does not.
You cannot extinguish BSD software. You may close your copy. However the original branch unaffected by that. Nor can you patent your copy of BSD code, the code itself exists as prior art. Copyleft or not is of no concern to actual extinguishment. Patenting your subsequent mods to code may yes block others from moving in that same direction. That's really a question of patent reform, not license. Restricting patents in license like GPL is interesting and useful (presuming tested as enforceable) if you're worried about direction. Don't mistake patent restrictions as freedom though. As Juan may tell you, both patents and license are bullshit, at least to some people.