license/licensing

Suppose I want to rewrite a driver that was already written for Linux / Windows. What parts (if any) could I use ? And what parts essentially must change in order to make a whole BSD driver free and clear of any blow back? thanks in advance

I am going to ship a FreeBSD system to a customer and this customer wants me to install a kind of a limited desktop system. My problem is now that even a quite tiny set of functionality drags in tons of dependencies, and in order to be save with the various license requirements, I wanted to...

Under my Linux experiences many Linux distro include plenties of nonfree programs, and have plenties of comments against GPL, I'm just heartbroken against them, including their Torvalds.:@ However, I've just tried out some systems based on our FreeBSD project and Richard M Stallman's GNU...

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=149028593819547&w=2

Hello community! Is it ethical and morals that the free software of your code modified for the commercial use of private property without receiving anything?

This is a really crazy article about SAP's recent court win, where indirect users of their services still have to have a license? http://www.pcworld.com/article/3171001/cloud-computing/sap-license-fees-are-due-even-for-indirect-users-court-says.html SAP isn't a cheap system to in cost or man...

Hi there, I am working on a user library that will be distributed under the terms of BSD license (probably 2-clause one). The library uses some code from net80211 and need to use wpa control interface for 802.1X and WPA/WPA2 related stuff. My questions are; 1 ) Since the work in the user...

Well, before I start let me state this: This is NOT intended as the beginning of a flamewar, a crusade or something alike! It is meant as an honest question or discussion! So after a some time using FreeBSD and/or Linux one discovers pretty soon, there are some strong opinions about certain...

I find this topic interesting: https://boingboing.net/2016/08/05/monkey-selfie-case-headed.html A monkey can't have a copyright but a company can.

For anyone curious, here is a short attempt to clarify (according to the Software Freedom Conservancy) the incompatibilities between the GPLv2 and the CDDLv1. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ I'm no lawyer, but here is my (overly simplified) interpretation. According...

I've recently stumbled across a video about whether "open source" is a viable business model. They seem to conflate "open source" with the GPL or Linux (from their own description) and derive their conclusion of it not working from the constraints of copyleft licensing and the outcomes of...

This is the article: http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/ The VMware ESXi products come with stuff like Busybox and Linux, and there is a lawsuit pending because they didn't provide source code. This is a big WTF. Now VMware will probably either switch to *BSD or (likely)...

Hello, I'm studying the FreeBSD source code and I've found that most of FreeBSD files are licensed under BSD license with advertising clause (I've found more than 500 files only in the /sys directory). Does the copyright notice of FreeBSD (BSD 2 clause) overwrite the BSD advertising clause in...

Hello, all. This may sound like a really stupid question, but please keep in mind, I use Linux a lot. ;) What is the repository for extra free/nonfree packages (if any)? I Googled around and couldn't find much, only that on the a GNU page they said that I should be able to find it easily...

This is way off topic, but in keeping with my fetish for new OS stuff, I managed to find an allegedly open sourced, former Nintendo company research OS project called "ES". Link: http://code.google.com/p/es-operating-system/ Does anyone have additional info on this?

I want to know why the FreeBSD operating system is not under a copyleft license, because this allows to make the software non libre( free as freedom ), so this is not good at matter of ethics. ( Correct me if I write bad english, I'm not an advanced english speaker because I speak spanish ).

Let's say I'm about to develop some software. It's free and open source. However I'd like to make money on Windows/OSX users, eg. non open source OS users. In this scheme-of-things, those users should purchase a license. I would absolutely avoid splitting the software in variants, eg. OSS one...

Well, I noticed now and again that references to licensing and FreeBSD, GPL, OSI et al. rear their head from time to time. Whilst not pertaining directly FreeBSD license I found this "interesting" video from CERN. It regards their efforts to promote Free/Open Software. For those interested in...

Ok. So, what do you think about viral copyleft licenses, such as GPL or LGPL? My opinion is, that I don't like them. Currently I'd like it if all interesting software that is licensed with those licenses could be re-licensed or rewritten with a real free license, like BSD, MIT, zlib or WTFPL...

Hi All, I am seeking yet more enlightenment... When running make against some ports, a messgae flies past stating that the user has accepted the XYZ license. Is there a way to confirm what licenses are required for a port and all its dependancies, similar in operation to make...