(note, this was a meant as a possible pro BSD position in a licensing discussion. The discussion starter so to say. It was converted to a powerpoint, but that got lost, so all I had was these notes. It is put down crudely on purpose, though I think it touches a real good line of reasoning. The perspective is from a low ranking developer in a mid to large company that would like to use OSS, but taking licensing related decisions on his own is hard. I was working as a programmer in very small section of a very big utility company at the time, without any direct contact to IT policy makers within the company) (L)GPL: before using package, the developer - has to take certain responsibilities on me (submit fixes back etc) - might have to split off code into shared libraries(.so,.dll) due to license, not technical requirements. (LGPL without static linking exception), and deal with deployment and versioning issues resulting from it. - Must take a decision if I am obliged to open _ALL PARTS_ of the source eventually (GPL). To do so, the developer - has to get that authorised -> go to immediate boss. Two cases: a) small company, or brave boss -> consent/signature. Ready. b) big company, paper pusher boss, pushes it up the commandchain, multiple levels of IT policymakers, legal department (for a summary of possible problems, read "Dilbert") -> 99% of time easier to rewrite package in that time. --- Per license pro/con: BSD: - Simply use it, but don't forget to put that note in the readme (accompanying docs) PRO: - least administrative burden. - Ease leads to better cooperation than compulsion. - You are less required to have an own legal division or sell your soul to GNU to use theirs. CON: - you might miss a few lines of code from a few sloppy or malignant people/companies. - You can't write Slashdot stories about squeezing a few build scripts out of router companies. But you don't have to spend resources to try either. (L)GPL: CON: - more serious developers in companies avoid your pkgs, write their own/Libre versions, or buy proprietary packages that make open sourcing or opening up after EOL at a later point more difficult, since the resulting product is multi-company. Resulting in the overall feedback and contributions being lower, and increased proprietariness of the package. - license management a drain on resources, even for people that can live with it. PRO: - But the idiots that don't read licenses (and are generally less able) *HAVE* to submit fixes back. - Satisfies a certain percentage of green idealistic students. Of course when they graduate and get hard deadlines, this changes. - High profile news when you get some company forced to grudly open a few scripts or optimizations (like Linksys like stories where firmwares were forced open. - .... but that causes whole generations of companies to not use anything even only resembling the (L)GPL), or at least erect barriers to use open source in certain codebases. Result of BSD: nobody has to, but actual use generally leads to cooperation more than forcing people -> more use and better response quality. Total effect BSD>(L)GPL+( a few lines of code forced from unwilling companies). Drawing parallels to the "who is more productive, slaves or free workers?" question is not considered far fetched. Forcing people is rarely rewarding, unless you are a Tax office, the Army, the RIAA or MPAA.