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+Copyright law is complex, OpenBSD policy is simple — OpenBSD strives to 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. -
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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 Unix source distribution un-encumbered by proprietary code and commercial licensing. -
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The ability of a freely redistributable "Berkeley" Unix to move forward on a competitive basis with other operating systems depends on the willingness of the various development groups to exchange code amongst @@ -43,10 +46,10 @@ the ability to exchange and re-distribute code, while honoring the spirit of the copyright and concept of attribution is fundamental to promoting the cooperation of the people involved. -
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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 @@ -102,17 +105,18 @@ copyright, or must relegate this material to a secondary status, i.e. OpenBSD as a whole is freely redistributable, but some optional components may not be. -
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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. 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. -
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Copyright law admits to three general categories of works:
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The fundamental concept is that there is primacy of the copyright, that is a copyright of a derivative work does not affect the rights held by the owner of the copyright of the original work, rather only the part added. Likewise the copyright of a compilation does not affect the rights of the owner of the included works, only the compilation as an entity. -
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It is vitally important to understand that copyrights are broad protections as defined by national and international copyright law. The "copyright notices" usually included in source files are not copyrights, but rather @@ -139,8 +143,8 @@ license terms which grant permissions subject to copyright law and with disclaimers that state the position of the copyright holder/distributor with respect to liability surrounding use of the material. -
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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 @@ -152,16 +156,16 @@ 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. -
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Because copyrights arise from the creation of a work, rather than through a registration process, there needs to be a practical way to extend permission to use a work beyond what might be allowed by "fair use" provisions of the copyright laws. -
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This permission typically takes the form of a "release" or "license" included in the work, which grants the additional uses beyond those granted by copyright law, usually subject to a variety of conditions. @@ -169,19 +173,20 @@ he imposes no restrictions on use of the material, at the other restrictive clauses that actually grant no additional rights or impose restrictive, discriminatory or impractical conditions on use of the work. -
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Note that a license is not to be confused with a copyright transfer. While a transfer 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. -
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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: +
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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 holder—the holder of a copyright on a derivative work can neither grant additional permissions for use of the original work, nor impose more restrictive conditions for use of that work. -
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Because copyright arises from the creation of a work and not the text or a registration process, removing or altering a copyright notice or associated release terms has no bearing on the existence of the copyright, @@ -207,8 +213,8 @@ and conditions does not supersede them, rather it casts doubts on the rights of the person making the amendments to use the material and creates confusion as to whether anyone can use the amended version or derivatives thereof. -
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Finally, releases are generally binding on the material that they are distributed with. This means that if the originator of a work distributes that work with a release granting certain permissions, those permissions @@ -219,13 +225,12 @@ the copyright holder decide to "go commercial" he can not revoke permissions already granted for the use of the work as distributed, though he may impose more restrictive permissions in his future distributions of that work. -
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This section attempts to summarize the position of OpenBSD relative to some commonly encountered copyrights. -
@@ -398,6 +403,3 @@ domain.