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Free Software is Software which grants recipients the Freedom to modify and redistribute the software. This would normally be prohibited by Copyright law, so with free software, the copyright holder must give recipients the explicit permission to do these things. This grant of rights is called a license, and if the above noted freedoms are included in the grant, the license is a '''free software license'''. Put another way, a free software license is a license which grants permissions to the recipient to remove any ownership issues which would otherwise prevent the software from being Free Software . FSF-APPROVED FREE SOFTWARE LICENSES Free Software Foundation , the group that maintains The Free Software Definition, maintains a list of free software licenses. The list distinguishes between free software licenses that are compatible or incompatible with the FSF license of choice, the GNU General Public License , which is a Copyleft license. The list also contains licenses which the FSF considers non-free for various reasons. Note that the Open Source License list differs slightly, but in almost all cases the definitions apply to the same licenses.
BSD PHILOSOPHY Many users and developers of BSD -based operating systems have a different position on licensing. The main difference is the belief that the Copyleft licenses, particularly the GNU General Public License (GPL), are too complicated and have restrictions which are undesirable. The GPL, instead, requires derivative work to be released according to the GPL, in what is termed a "viral" effect of copyleft licenses. Essentially, the BSD license's only requirement is to acknowledge the original authors, and poses no restrictions on how the Source Code may be used. As a result, BSD code can find its way into Proprietary Software that only acknowledge the source. For instance, the IP Stack in Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are derived from BSD-licensed software. GPL supporters claim that mandating derivative works remain free fosters the growth of free software and requires equal participation by all users. Developers who use GPL code have to share their improvements with the community, supporting the growth of the software they received. Supporters of the BSD license argue that it is more free than the GPL because it grants the right to do anything with the source code, second only to software in the 's "four freedoms of free software"; using, studying, copying, and distributing modifications of the code. Code licensed under the BSD license can be relicensed under the GPL (is "GPL-compatible") without securing the consent of all original authors. Code under the GPL cannot be relicensed under the BSD license without securing the consent of all original authors, as the BSD license is not copyleft and therfore "GPL-incompatible". Existing free software BSDs tend to avoid including software licensed under the GPL in the core operating system, or the ''base system'', except as a last resort when alternatives are non-existent or vastly less capable, such as with GCC . The OpenBSD project has acted to remove GPL-licensed tools in favour of BSD-licensed alternatives, some newly written and some adapted from older code. DEBIAN The Debian project uses the criteria laid out in its Debian Free Software Guidelines . The only notable cases where Debian and Free Software Foundation disagree are over the Artistic License and the GNU Free Documentation License . Debian accept the original Artistic License as being a free software license, but FSF disagree. This has very little impact however since the Artistic License is almost always used in a Dual-license setup, along with the GNU General Public License . Regarding the GNU Free Documentation License , Debian and FSF disagree over whether it is a software license at all, and therefore whether any criteria for free software should be applied to it. Debian argues that documentation is a "subset of software", and so documentation licenses must be examined against free software guidelines {Link without Title} . FSF say that documentation is qualitatively different from software and is subject to different requirements. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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