[ Thanks to Tina
Gasperson for this link. ]
“…while all these differences have been the subject of debate,
none cuts to the heart of the perceived gap between BSD and Linux
like the issue of licensing differences. “The various free BSDs are
under the BSD license, which allows someone to take the code
private,” says Bruce Perens, primary author of “The Open Source
Definition,” and a founder of the Open Source Initiative. The BSD
license allows developers to modify the source code of software, in
much the same way as the General Public License (GPL).”
“But unlike the GPL, the BSD license also allows developers
to create proprietary software from modified code, without giving
those modifications back as Open Source. That causes some
consternation among many in the Open Source community, including
Perens.”
“By contrast, anything created with GPL code remains Open
Source. The software can be sold, but the source code must be
included, for free. “The GPL requires that everyone in the
market play by the same rules,” says Jay Sulzberger, secretary of
LXNY, New York’s free software support organization. BSD advocates
put it another way, claiming that the GPL tries to force everyone
to live by its tenets.”