Copyright law is complex, OpenBSD policy is simple - OpenBSD strives to -maintain the spirit of the original Berkeley Unix copyrights. +provide code that can be freely used, copied, modified, and distributed +by anyone and for any purpose. This maintains the spirit of the original +Berkeley Software Distribution. The preferred wording of a license to be +applied to new code can be found in the +license template.
OpenBSD can exist as it does today because of the example set by the Computer Systems Research Group at Berkeley and the battles which they -and others fought to create a relatively un-encumbered Unix source -distribution. +and others fought to create a Unix source distribution un-encumbered +by proprietary code and commercial licensing.
The ability of a freely redistributable "Berkeley" Unix @@ -42,7 +46,7 @@
-The Berkeley copyright poses no restrictions on private or commercial +The original Berkeley copyright poses no restrictions on private or commercial use of the software and imposes only simple and uniform requirements for maintaining copyright notices in redistributed versions and crediting the originator of the material only in @@ -103,7 +107,7 @@ While the overall subject of copyright law is far beyond the scope of this document, some basics are in order. Under the current copyright law, copyrights are implicit in the creation of a new work and reside with -the creator, unless otherwise assigned. In general the copyright applies +the creator. In general the copyright applies only to the new work, not the material the work was derived from, nor those portions of the derivative material included in the new work.
@@ -136,6 +140,19 @@ with respect to liability surrounding use of the material.
+By international law, specifically the Berne Convention for the +Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, part of the author's +copyright, the so-called moral rights, are inalienable. This +includes the author's right "to claim authorship of the work and +to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, +or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which +would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation". In some countries, +the law reserves additional inalienable moral rights to the author. +On the other hand, the author is free to transfer other parts +of his copyright, the so-called economic rights, in particular the +rights to use, copy, modify, distribute, and license the work. +
+
Because copyrights arise from the creation of a work, rather than through @@ -152,6 +169,26 @@ restrictive clauses that actually grant no additional rights or impose restrictive, discriminatory or impractical conditions on use of the work.
+ +Note that a license is not to be confused with a copyright transfer. +While a tranfer would give the new copyright holder exclusive +rights to use the code and take these rights away from the author, +a license typically grants additional people non-exclusive +rights to use the code, while the authors retain all their rights. +
+ +The above observations regarding moral rights imply that putting +code under an ISC or two-clause BSD license essentially makes the +code as free as it can possibly get. Modifying the wording of these +licenses can only result in one of the three following effects: +
Again, an important point to note is that the release and conditions can only apply to the portion of the work that was originated by the copyright