[Discuss] Home NAS redux

[Rich Pieri]

On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 10:36:36 -0500
Mark Woodward <markw at mohawksoft.com> wrote:

> But as an MIT or BSD licensor, you allow murky chain of intellectual 
> property.

As a BSD licensor I give explicit permission to the world to create
derivative works. There is nothing at all murky about it.

> People and corporations can take it, lock it up, and you'd 
> never know.

Which is fine by me because I'm not the one supporting it. They are.

No, seriously. I've had code that I've published under the GPL come
back to bite me. Others branched that code and broke it and users were
coming to me to fix that brokenness. I didn't need that crap then and I
don't need it now.

> Maybe that doesn't bother you, but there are a whole lot
> of side considerations to think about. You can't even enforce your 
> requirement that the header remains intact because you don't have the 
> right to see their modifications of your code.

You appear to use the terms "right" and "freedom" interchangeably but
they are not at all synonymous. A right is an idea or concept granted
and protected by law such as the right to copy (copyright), or by common
consensus such as the right to pursue happiness. Freedom is the state
of being free of restriction or duress.

As a BSD licensor I do retain copyright to my original work and
therefore I do retain the the right to enforce my license and verify
that a licensee has complied with the terms of that license. I may not
have the freedom to do so for a variety of reasons such as obfuscation
or lack of appropriate tools. I have, however, granted the licensee the
freedom to do almost anything he wants with the work that I've licensed
to him including things that might be an inconvenience to me.

-- 
Rich P.