Freelan - an open-source, multi-platform, peer-to-peer VPN software

Re:Freelan - an open-source, multi-platform, peer-to-peer VP... by belorn on Sunday September 29, 2013 @08:14PM (#6467126)

Users of BSD software still need to follow the BSD license. This mean for 4 clause BSD that you must including the line "This product includes software developed by the <organization>." in All advertising materials. If you are using the Revised BSD License, you still need to include the BSD license in any documentation or "other materials" that is shipped.

So if you like to be in full control over your advertisement, and your documentation, bsd do indeed "poison" the project. It clearly adds restrictions. I would however not use such derogatory term when describing the BSD. Is it really that hard to avoid using derogatory terms and simply use language without it?

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Re:Freelan - an open-source, multi-platform, peer-to-peer VP... by kika on Sunday September 29, 2013 @08:26PM (#6467156)

I wrote specifically "BSD-type" not BSD. We didn't use BSD license itself, as far as I can tell and the project contains surprisingly small amount of _any_ third party code.

I do not consider "poisonous license" a derogatory term. English is not my native language, may be this is why.

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Re:Freelan - an open-source, multi-platform, peer-to-peer VP... by belorn on Sunday September 29, 2013 @08:40PM (#6467202)

That's fair. I consider calling anything, be that GPL, BSD, or open source as poisonous as to be on the side of derogatory term, similar to the cancer comparison made by Steve Ballmer. I can see however if that’s not always the case for others.

Just as a side note, I found an half year old HN article which talked about the BSD requirements, with suggest that one might want to use ISC license in some cases: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5798431

Not that your project is code for embedded software (or is it? C code tend to be quite fast and have small memory footprint), but it might be an interesting read.

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Re:Freelan - an open-source, multi-platform, peer-to-peer VP... by kika on Sunday September 29, 2013 @10:49PM (#6467521)

We designed and coded it with embedded in mind. We both have extensive embedded experience and it was a no brainer with all that hype about "internet of things". Our stack is naturally born IPv6 and as such is a natural match for "things", so not thinking about embedding would have been clearly a mistake.

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Re:Freelan - an open-source, multi-platform, peer-to-peer VP... by AnthonyMouse on Sunday September 29, 2013 @08:28PM (#6467160)

>So if you like to be in full control over your advertisement, and your documentation, bsd do indeed "poison" the project.

The real trouble with the advertising clause is that it breaks compatibility with several other common licenses. Some of the BSD advocates actually like this because it causes trouble for people who use GPL code (the usual holy war justifications), but the net result is still that you have two otherwise-useful pieces of code that become mutually incompatible for political reasons.

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