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About BSD Licensing

BSD licensing means free, permissive licenses for open-source software, with low restrictions regarding the use and distribution of the licensed software. The first BSD license was used for Berkeley Software Distribution (thus the name of BSD), a Unix-like operating system. All further revisions are called modified BSD licenses.

Widely used today, BSD licenses bear a close resemblance to the original BSD Unix license first penned in 1969. These licenses simply mandate the retention of the BSD license notice for all code if redistributed in source code format, or the reproduction of the notice if redistributed in binary format. Importantly, they do not require the distribution of the source code.

There are 4 main clauses to the classic BSD license:

  1. As specified in the BSD Unix license, the code can be copied, modified and redistributed as long as a copy of the original copyright notice is retained.
  2. Any documentation or material accompanying the distribution must reproduce the copyright notice, as well as the disclaimer and the list of conditions, for redistributions in binary format.
  3. Not claiming authorship for code that was not written by the user and not suing the author for undesired or unexpected functionality.
  4. The name of the software, organization or authors in the copyright notice cannot be used to promote or advertise products derived from modifications of the redistributed code, without prior permission.

Subsequent BSD licenses may not include all these clauses. However, the first two clauses are generally used. The 2-clause license, otherwise known as the FreeBSD license, is one that only keeps the first two clauses, providing a more simplified version. The FreeBSD includes a disclaimer on views expressed and is GNU GPL compatible, per the Free Software Foundation.

About MIT Licensing

The MIT license, having its origins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is a permissive free software license. That means, it puts little restriction on its reuse.

MIT licensed software, compatible with many copyleft licenses, can be re-licensed as GNU GPL and integrated with other GPL software. Also, MIT licensed software can be reused with proprietary software if the license terms and copyright notice are included with all copies. Alternatively, the software can be re-licensed, removing this requirement.

MIT licensing is being used with some well-known projects, including X Window System, Node.js, Lua, jQuery, and Ruby on Rails. Companies such as Google (Angular), Microsoft (.NET Core), and Facebook (React) use the MIT license.

The license terms allow the software to be used, copied, modified, published, distributed, and/or sold free of charge. Anyone with a copy must include the copyright notice with all copies of the software. The software is redistributed without any warranty and its authors or copyright holders cannot be held liable for any claim or damages.

Similar to the BSD license, no express patent licenses are included in the MIT license.

DID YOU KNOW?

Using FreeBSD instead of Linux for your next project or product means you’re free from the constraints of GPL Licensing.

If you have a project you are considering migrating away from Linux, our teams are ready to talk about the implications of switching platforms and the advantages of joining our community.

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