Dear discussion readers,
Today I stumbled on an argument for the use of the BSD-license, as hosted on the FreeBSD website, originating from 2013. [1]
[1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/article.html
Apart from accusing the GPL of intentionally keeping software "at the research and development stages", the argument is made to avoid helping competitors and to avoid license issues when developing.
I'd rather like to turn both these arguments around in that you get an inherent benefit from having competitors contribute to the equal playing field of free software as its value increases in relation to the non-free alternatives. Regarding the licenses it seems that for any large software project license considerations are real and hardly unavoidable.
As has been stated by the FSF many times over, there are cases where the GPL might not be the right license, and even copyleft might be undesirable. [2] The only indirect approval of the BSD license I have found was in that software licenses should adhere to current licensing practices in related projects.
[2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html
Do you consider that there are still valid arguments to be made for the use of the BSD license in software projects other than license compatibility with existing projects?
I'm keen to hear from you.
Kind regards, Nico Rikken