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OpenBSD Copyright Policy![[OpenBSD]](http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html/images/smalltitle.gif) Copyright PolicyGoalCopyright law is complex, OpenBSD policy is simple - OpenBSD strives tomaintain the spirit of the original Berkeley Unix copyrights.OpenBSD can exist as it does today because of the example set by theComputer Systems Research Group at Berkeley and the battles which theyand others fought to create a relatively un-encumbered Unix sourcedistribution.The ability of a freely redistributable "Berkeley" Unixto move forward on a competitive basis with other operating systems dependson the willingness of the various development groups to exchange code amongstthemselves and with other projects.Understanding the legal issues surrounding copyright is fundamental tothe ability to exchange and re-distribute code, while honoring the spirit ofthe copyright and concept of attribution is fundamental to promoting thecooperation of the people involved.The Berkeley CopyrightThe Berkeley copyright poses no restrictions on private or commercialuse of the software and imposes only simple and uniform requirementsfor maintaining copyright notices in redistributed versions andcrediting the originator of the material only inadvertising.For instance: * Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1993 * The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software * must display the following acknowledgement: * This product includes software developed by the University of * California, Berkeley and its contributors. * 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors * may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software * without specific prior written permission. * * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND * ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE * IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE * ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE * FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL * DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS * OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) * HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT * LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY * OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF * SUCH DAMAGE. *Berkeley rescinded the 3rd term (the advertising term) on 22 July 1999.Verbatim copies of the Berkeley license in the OpenBSD tree have thatterm removed. In addition, many 3rd-party BSD-style licenses consistsolely of the first two terms.Because the OpenBSD copyright imposes no conditions beyond thoseimposed by the Berkeley copyright, OpenBSD can hope to share the samewide distribution and applicability as the Berkeley distributions.It follows however, that OpenBSD cannot include material whichincludes copyrights which are more restrictive than the Berkeleycopyright, or must relegate this material to a secondary status,i.e. OpenBSD as a whole is freely redistributable, but some optionalcomponents may not be.Copyright LawWhile the overall subject of copyright law is far beyond the scope ofthis document, some basics are in order. Under the current copyright law,copyrights are implicit in the creation of a new work and reside withthe creator, unless otherwise assigned. In general the copyright appliesonly to the new work, not the material the work was derived from, northose portions of the derivative material included in the new work.Copyright law admits to three general categories of works:Original WorkA new work that is not derived from an existing work.Derivative WorkWork that is derived from, includes or amends existing works.CompilationsA work that is a compilation of existing new and derivative works.The fundamental concept is that there is primacy of the copyright, thatis a copyright of a derivative work does not affect the rights held bythe owner of the copyright of the original work, rather only the partadded. Likewise the copyright of a compilation does not affect the rightsof the owner of the included works, only the compilation as an entity.It is vitally important to understand that copyrights are broad protectionsas defined by national and international copyright law. The "copyrightnotices" usually included in source files are not copyrights, but rathernotices that a party asserts that they hold copyright to the material orto part of the material. Typically these notices are associated withlicense terms which grant permissions subject to copyright law and withdisclaimers that state the position of the copyright holder/distributorwith respect to liability surrounding use of the material.Permissions - the flip sideBecause copyrights arise from the creation of a work, rather than througha registration process, there needs to be a practical way to extendpermission to use a work beyond what might be allowed by "fair use"provisions of the copyright laws.This permission typically takes the form of a "release" or "license"included in the work, which grants the additional uses beyond thosegranted by copyright law, usually subject to a variety of conditions.At one extreme sits "public domain" where the originator asserts thathe imposes no restrictions on use of the material, at the otherrestrictive clauses that actually grant no additional rights or imposerestrictive, discriminatory or impractical conditions on use of the work.Again, an important point to note is that the release and conditions canonly apply to the portion of the work that was originated by the copyrightholder - the holder of a copyright on a derivative work can neithergrant additional permissions for use of the original work, nor impose morerestrictive conditions for use of that work.Because copyright arises from the creation of a work and not the textor a registration process, removing or altering a copyright notice orassociated release terms has no bearing on the existence of the copyright,rather all that is accomplished is to cast doubt upon whatever rights theperson making the modifications had to use the material in the first place.Likewise, adding terms and conditions in conflict with the original termsand conditions does not supersede them, rather it casts doubts on the rightsof the person making the amendments to use the material and creates confusionas to whether anyone can use the amended version or derivatives thereof.Finally, releases are generally binding on the material that theyare distributed with. This means that if the originator of a work distributesthat work with a release granting certain permissions, those permissionsapply as stated, without discrimination, to all persons legitimatelypossessing a copy of the work. That means that having granted a permission,the copyright holder can not retroactively say that an individual or classof individuals are no longer granted those permissions. Likewise shouldthe copyright holder decide to "go commercial" he can not revoke permissionsalready granted for the use of the work as distributed, though he may imposemore restrictive permissions in his future distributions of that work.Specific CasesThis section attempts to summarize the position of OpenBSD relative tosome commonly encountered copyrights.BerkeleyThe Berkeley copyright is the model for the OpenBSD copyright. It retainsthe rights of the copyright holder, while imposing minimal conditions onthe use of the copyrighted material. Material with Berkeley copyrights,or copyrights closely adhering to the Berkeley model can generally beincluded in OpenBSD.AT&TAs part of its settlement with AT&T, Berkeley included anAT&T copyright notice on some of the files in 4.4BSD lite and lite2.The terms of this license are identical to the standard Berkeley license.Additionally, OpenBSD includes some other AT&T code with non-restrictivecopyrights, such as the reference implementation ofawk.CalderaCaldera (now known as the SCO group) is the current owner of the Unixcode copyrights. On 23 January 2002, the original Unix code (versions 1through seven, including 32V) was freed by Caldera. This code is nowavailable under a4-term BSD-style license.As a result, it is now possible to incorporate real Unix code into OpenBSD(though this code is quite old and generally requires significant changesto bring it up to date).DEC, Sun, other manufacturers/software houses.In general OpenBSD does not include material copyrighted by manufacturersor software houses. Material may be included where the copyright owner hasgranted general permission for reuse without conditions, with terms similarto the Berkeley copyright, or where the material is the product of anemployee and the employer's copyright notice effectively releases anyrights they might have to the work.Carnegie-Mellon (CMU, Mach)The Carnegie-Mellon copyright is similar to the Berkeley copyright, exceptthat it requests that derivative works be made available to Carnegie-Mellon.Because this is only a request and not a condition, such material can stillbe included in OpenBSD. It should be noted that existing versions of Machare still subject to AT&T copyrights, which prevents the generaldistribution of Mach sources.ApacheThe original Apache copyright is similar to the Berkeley copyright, exceptthat it stipulates that products derived from the code may nothave "Apache" in their name. The purpose of this clause is toavoid a situation in which another party releases a modified versionof the code named in such a way to make users think that it is the"official" version. This is not an issue with OpenBSD becauseOpenBSD is a Compilation, and not aDerived Work. Source code published under version 2 of the Apache license cannotbe included into OpenBSD. As a consequence, OpenBSD now maintainsits own version of Apache based on version 1.3.29. The OpenBSDversion includes many enhancements and bugfixes.ISCThe ISC copyright is functionally equivalent to a two-term BSDcopyright with language removed that is made unnecessary by theBerne convention. This is the preferred license for new codeincorporated into OpenBSD. A sample license is included inthe source tree as /usr/src/share/misc/license.template.GNU General Public License, GPL, LGPL, copyleft, etc.The GNU Public License and licenses modeled on it impose the restrictionthat source code must be distributed or made available for all works thatare derivatives of the GNU copyrighted code.While this may be a noble strategy in terms of software sharing, it is acondition that is typically unacceptable for commercial use of software.As a consequence, software bound by the GPL terms can not be included inthe kernel or "runtime" of OpenBSD, though software subject to GPL termsmay be included as development tools or as part of the system that are"optional" as long as such use does not result in OpenBSD as a wholebecoming subject to the GPL terms.As an example, GCC and other GNU tools are included in the OpenBSDtool chain. However, it is quite possible to distribute a system formany applications without a tool chain, or the distributor can chooseto include a tool chain as an optional bundle which conforms to theGPL terms.NetBSDMuch of OpenBSD is originally based on and evolved from NetBSD, since someof the OpenBSD developers were involved in the NetBSD project. The generalNetBSD license terms are compatible with the Berkeley license and permitsuch use. Material subject only to the general NetBSDlicense can generally be included in OpenBSD.In the past, NetBSD has included material copyrighted by individualswho have imposed license conditions beyond that of the generalNetBSD license, but granted the NetBSD Foundation license todistribute the material. Such material can not be included inOpenBSD as long as the conditions imposed are at odds with theOpenBSD license terms or releases from those terms are offered ona discriminatory basis.FreeBSDMost of FreeBSD is also based on Berkeley licensed material or includescopyright notices based on the Berkeley model. Such material can beincluded in OpenBSD, while those parts that are subject to GPL orvarious individual copyright terms that are at odds with the OpenBSD licensecan not be included in OpenBSD.LinuxMost of Linux is subject to GPL style licensing terms and thereforecan not be included in OpenBSD. Individual components may be eligible,subject to the terms of the originator's copyright notices. Note thatLinux "distributions" may also be subject to additional copyright claimsof the distributing organization, either as a compilation or on materialincluded that is not part of the Linux core.X, XFree86, X.OrgX, X.Org or XFree86 are not parts of OpenBSD, rather X.Org and parts ofXFree86 3.3.6 are distributedwith many OpenBSD ports as a convenience to the user, subject to applicablelicense terms.Shareware, Charityware, Freeware, etc.Most "shareware" copyright notices impose conditions for redistribution,use or visibility that are at conflict with the OpenBSD project goals.Review on a case-by-case basis is required as to whether the wordingof the conditions is acceptable in terms of conditions being requested vs.demanded and whether the spirit of the conditions is compatible withgoals of the OpenBSD project.Public DomainWhile material that is truly entered into the "Public Domain" can beincluded in OpenBSD, review is required on a case by case basis.Frequently the "public domain" assertion is made by someone who doesnot really hold all rights under Copyright law to grant that status orthere are a variety of conditions imposed on use. For a work to betruly in the "Public Domain" all rights are abandoned and the materialis offered without restrictions. www@openbsd.org$OpenBSD: policy.html,v 1.25 2007/04/25 06:43:32 tedu Exp $ |
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