BSD License

BSD License is a permissive free software license that originated from the University of California, Berkeley and is widely used by Apple Inc., Google, and Microsoft. The license was first used in the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system developed by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Bill Joy. The BSD License has undergone several revisions, with the most recent version being the 3-clause BSD License, which is compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) used by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation.

History and development

The BSD License was first introduced in the 1970s by the University of California, Berkeley as a way to distribute the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) operating system, which was developed by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Bill Joy. The license was designed to be permissive, allowing users to modify and distribute the software freely, while also providing a level of protection for the original authors, including Eric Allman and Marshall Kirk McKusick. The BSD License was influenced by the MIT License, which was used by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Nicholas Negroponte, and the Apache License, which was developed by the Apache Software Foundation and Brian Behlendorf. Over time, the BSD License has undergone several revisions, including the 4-clause BSD License and the 3-clause BSD License, which is the most widely used version today, and is compatible with the GPL used by Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel.

Terms and conditions

The BSD License has several key terms and conditions that govern its use, including the requirement that the copyright notice and disclaimer be included in all copies of the software, as specified by Larry Wall and the Perl programming language. The license also grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software freely, as long as they comply with the terms of the license, which is similar to the Mozilla Public License used by Mozilla Foundation and Mitchell Baker. The BSD License does not require users to disclose their modifications or to make their modifications available under the same license, unlike the GPL used by Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman. This makes the BSD License a popular choice for companies like Apple Inc., Google, and Microsoft, which use the license for their macOS, Android, and Windows operating systems, respectively.

Variants and versions

There are several variants and versions of the BSD License, including the 4-clause BSD License, which includes a clause that requires users to acknowledge the contribution of the original authors in their advertising materials, as required by University of California, Berkeley and Ken Thompson. The 3-clause BSD License is the most widely used version today and is compatible with the GPL used by Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel. There is also the 2-clause BSD License, which is similar to the MIT License used by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Nicholas Negroponte. The FreeBSD project, which is a Unix-like operating system developed by Jordan Hubbard and Theo de Raadt, uses a custom version of the BSD License, as does the OpenBSD project, which is led by Theo de Raadt.

Comparison with other licenses

The BSD License is often compared to other permissive free software licenses, such as the MIT License used by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Nicholas Negroponte, and the Apache License used by Apache Software Foundation and Brian Behlendorf. The BSD License is also compared to copyleft licenses like the GPL used by Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman, which require users to disclose their modifications and to make their modifications available under the same license, as required by Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel. The BSD License is generally considered to be more permissive than the GPL, but less permissive than the MIT License, which is used by GitHub and Chris Wanstrath. The BSD License is also compatible with the LGPL used by Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman, and the MPL used by Mozilla Foundation and Mitchell Baker.

Usage and adoption

The BSD License is widely used by companies like Apple Inc., Google, and Microsoft, which use the license for their macOS, Android, and Windows operating systems, respectively. The license is also used by FreeBSD and OpenBSD, which are Unix-like operating systems developed by Jordan Hubbard and Theo de Raadt. The BSD License is also used by Apache Software Foundation and Brian Behlendorf for the Apache HTTP Server, and by Mozilla Foundation and Mitchell Baker for the Firefox web browser. The license is popular among developers because it allows them to use and modify the software freely, without requiring them to disclose their modifications or to make their modifications available under the same license, as required by GPL used by Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel. The BSD License is also used by Netflix, Amazon Web Services, and Facebook, which use the license for their cloud computing and big data platforms, as well as by Red Hat and SUSE, which use the license for their Linux distributions. Category:Software licenses