On Free Licenses

I was reading some comments recently which hashed out a very old argument now about the differences between BSD-like licenses (such as Apache) and GPL-like licenses. For background the BSD-like licenses simply state that the code is free and clear and has no warranty. Some also request that you give credit to the original authors. GPL-like licenses also stipulate that any derivatives based on the GPL’d work must also be under the GPL—that is, you have to “share and share alike.” A nice summary of license types can be found over at the Creative Commons.

Anyway, a lot of fuss is made about which license is better and which is more “free.” In fact, both types are very free, the difference is in whose or what’s freedom is being protected. In the case of BSD-like licenses, it is the users freedom that is protected. The user of the content can do just about anything he or she wants, including taking the content and creating a propriety work with it.

Conversely, GPL-like licenses preserve freedom of content. The content will always remain free. Anything you do or change ends up falling under the same license; thus the content or its derivatives can never be closed back up into a proprietary system.

So either way, it’s still all about freedom.