Rant on BSD vs GPL was [Good ol' BSD vs. GPL]

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Wed Jan 7 03:04:15 PST 2015


On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:48 AM, Cathal Garvey
<cathalgarvey at 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.



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