On Saturday 16 June 2007, Aaron Hsu wrote: > The BSD-type licenses say that you can redistribute and modify the > code and maybe distribute the software in only binary form, but that > the software and its derivatives must still be licensed under the BSD > license, right?
No. You've got it wrong. If the original work is under a BSD license, your derivative work may be licensed in any way that you want. The one thing you can not do is remove the original copyright statement and license from the source files. With legal stuff, I find the easiest way to understand it is to look at the intended goals and then get a well trained contract lawyer to look over the document to make sure the legal wording and clauses match the intended goals. Even if the very best lawyers crafted the legal document, and they only used the most commonly accepted clauses and wording according to case law, nothing is ever certain in the world of law, so the legal standing of the document/contract/license can still be challenged in court, albeit with some difficulty. Works in the Public Domain are not copyrighted or licensed, since the Public Domain is owned by the public. Anyone can use or modify a Public Domain work in any way that they want. This means you can legally replace the name of the original author with your own name on a Public Domain work and try to take credit for the work. You can also modify the original Public Domain work (i.e. make a derivative work), and then copyright/license your modified version without giving any credit to the original author. It is considered extremely rude to not give proper attribution to the original author of a Public Domain work but unfortunately, it happens. Another problem with works in the Public Domain is it can be difficult to legally prove a work is really in the Public Domain and this alone can cause countless headaches. Worse yet, when combined with the fact that the author can be unknown, or even replaced, the legal standing of a Public Domain work can easily be questioned. Sadly, there is no library or registry of Public Domain works, so there is no easy way to look up the legal standing of works. And yes, still worse, since March 1, 1989 here in the US (in the style of the Bern Convention) all works are copyrighted by default, and due to this idiocy, you must be able to prove a work is in the Public Domain. As Theo stated earlier, he wants to exert his legal right to be known as the original author. By using copyright and a very free license, Theo and all of the developers prevent jerks from taking their work (from the Public Domain) and fraudulently trying to claim it as their own. His approach not only gives credit where it's due, but also prevents the idiocy of needing to "prove" works are in the Public Domain as well as thwarting patent trolls who would steal and seal all of the good ideas from their code. Though using a copyright statement and the BSD license certainly does prevent some legal problems, the thing we need to realize is this approach is still a sad hack for a broken system. We need to fix the system itself. -JCR
