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1.12 deraadt 17: <p>
1.18 jufi 18: <h2><font color="#e00000">Copyright Policy</font></h2>
19: <hr>
1.12 deraadt 20:
1.18 jufi 21: <ul>
22: <li><h3><font color="#e00000">Goal</font></h3><p>
1.1 grr 23:
24: Copyright law is complex, OpenBSD policy is simple - OpenBSD strives to
1.11 millert 25: maintain the spirit of the original Berkeley Unix copyrights.
1.1 grr 26: <p>
1.12 deraadt 27:
1.3 grr 28: OpenBSD can exist as it does today because of the example set by the
29: Computer Systems Research Group at Berkeley and the battles which they
1.11 millert 30: and others fought to create a relatively un-encumbered Unix source
1.3 grr 31: distribution.
32: <p>
1.12 deraadt 33:
1.11 millert 34: The ability of a <strong>freely redistributable</strong> "Berkeley" Unix
1.3 grr 35: to move forward on a competitive basis with other operating systems depends
36: on the willingness of the various development groups to exchange code amongst
37: themselves and with other projects.
1.4 deraadt 38: Understanding the legal issues surrounding copyright is fundamental to
1.3 grr 39: the ability to exchange and re-distribute code, while honoring the spirit of
40: the copyright and concept of attribution is fundamental to promoting the
41: cooperation of the people involved.
42: <p>
1.12 deraadt 43:
1.18 jufi 44: <li><h3><font color="#e00000">The Berkeley Copyright</font></h3><p>
1.12 deraadt 45:
1.1 grr 46: The Berkeley copyright poses no restrictions on private or commercial
47: use of the software and imposes only simple and uniform requirements
48: for maintaining copyright notices in redistributed versions and
49: crediting the originator of the material <strong>only</strong> in
50: advertising.
51: <p>
1.13 deraadt 52: For instance:
53: <p>
54: <pre>
55: * Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1993
56: * The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
57: *
58: * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
59: * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
60: * are met:
61: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
62: * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
63: * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
64: * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
65: * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
66: * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
67: * must display the following acknowledgement:
68: * This product includes software developed by the University of
69: * California, Berkeley and its contributors.
70: * 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
71: * may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
72: * without specific prior written permission.
73: *
74: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
75: * ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
76: * IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
77: * ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
78: * FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
79: * DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
80: * OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
81: * HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
82: * LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
83: * OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
84: * SUCH DAMAGE.
85: *
86: </pre>
87: <p>
1.19 millert 88: Berkeley rescinded the 3rd term (the advertising term) on 22 July 1999.
89: Verbatim copies of the Berkeley license in the OpenBSD tree have that
90: term removed. In addition, many 3rd-party BSD-style licenses consist
91: solely of the first two terms.
1.13 deraadt 92: <p>
1.3 grr 93: Because the OpenBSD copyright imposes no conditions beyond those
94: imposed by the Berkeley copyright, OpenBSD can hope to share the same
95: wide distribution and applicability as the Berkeley distributions.
1.19 millert 96: It follows however, that OpenBSD cannot include material which
1.3 grr 97: includes copyrights which are more restrictive than the Berkeley
98: copyright, or must relegate this material to a secondary status,
99: i.e. OpenBSD as a whole is freely redistributable, but some optional
100: components may not be.
101: <p>
1.12 deraadt 102:
1.18 jufi 103: <li><h3><font color="#e00000">Copyright Law</font></h3><p>
1.1 grr 104: While the overall subject of copyright law is far beyond the scope of
1.2 grr 105: this document, some basics are in order. Under the current copyright law,
1.1 grr 106: copyrights are implicit in the creation of a new work and reside with
107: the creator, unless otherwise assigned. In general the copyright applies
108: only to the new work, not the material the work was derived from, nor
109: those portions of the derivative material included in the new work.
110: <p>
1.12 deraadt 111:
1.1 grr 112: Copyright law admits to three general categories of works:
113: <dl>
1.14 jufi 114: <dt>Original Work
1.1 grr 115: <dd>A new work that is not derived from an existing work.
116: <dt>Derivative Work
117: <dd>Work that is derived from, includes or amends existing works.
118: <dt>Compilations
119: <dd>A work that is a compilation of existing new and derivative works.
120: </dl>
1.12 deraadt 121: <p>
122:
1.1 grr 123: The fundamental concept is that there is primacy of the copyright, that
1.10 espie 124: is a copyright of a derivative work does not affect the rights held by
1.1 grr 125: the owner of the copyright of the original work, rather only the part
126: added. Likewise the copyright of a compilation does not affect the rights
127: of the owner of the included works, only the compilation as an entity.
128: <p>
1.12 deraadt 129:
1.1 grr 130: It is vitally important to understand that copyrights are broad protections
1.3 grr 131: as defined by national and international copyright law. The "copyright
132: notices" usually included in source files are not copyrights, but rather
133: notices that a party asserts that they hold copyright to the material or
1.5 todd 134: to part of the material. Typically these notices are associated with
1.3 grr 135: license terms which grant permissions subject to copyright law and with
136: disclaimers that state the position of the copyright holder/distributor
137: with respect to liability surrounding use of the material.
1.12 deraadt 138: <p>
139:
1.18 jufi 140: <li><h3><font color="#e00000">Permissions - the flip side</font></h3><p>
1.12 deraadt 141:
1.1 grr 142: Because copyrights arise from the creation of a work, rather than through
1.3 grr 143: a registration process, there needs to be a practical way to extend
1.16 jufi 144: permission to use a work beyond what might be allowed by "fair use"
1.1 grr 145: provisions of the copyright laws.
1.12 deraadt 146: <p>
147:
1.1 grr 148: This permission typically takes the form of a "release" or "license"
149: included in the work, which grants the additional uses beyond those
150: granted by copyright law, usually subject to a variety of conditions.
1.3 grr 151: At one extreme sits "public domain" where the originator asserts that
152: he imposes no restrictions on use of the material, at the other
153: restrictive clauses that actually grant no additional rights or impose
154: restrictive, discriminatory or impractical conditions on use of the work.
1.1 grr 155: <p>
1.12 deraadt 156:
1.3 grr 157: Again, an important point to note is that the release and conditions can
1.1 grr 158: only apply to the portion of the work that was originated by the copyright
159: holder - the holder of a copyright on a derivative work can neither
1.3 grr 160: grant additional permissions for use of the original work, nor impose more
161: restrictive conditions for use of that work.
1.1 grr 162: <p>
1.12 deraadt 163:
1.3 grr 164: Because copyright arises from the creation of a work and not the text
165: or a registration process, removing or altering a copyright notice or
1.10 espie 166: associated release terms has no bearing on the existence of the copyright,
1.20 jmc 167: rather all that is accomplished is to cast doubt upon whatever rights the
168: person making the modifications had to use the material in the first place.
169: Likewise, adding terms and conditions in conflict with the original terms
170: and conditions does not supersede them, rather it casts doubts on the rights
171: of the person making the amendments to use the material and creates confusion
172: as to whether anyone can use the amended version or derivatives thereof.
1.1 grr 173: <p>
1.12 deraadt 174:
1.1 grr 175: Finally, releases are generally binding on the material that they
176: are distributed with. This means that if the originator of a work distributes
177: that work with a release granting certain permissions, those permissions
178: apply as stated, without discrimination, to all persons legitimately
179: possessing a copy of the work. That means that having granted a permission,
180: the copyright holder can not retroactively say that an individual or class
181: of individuals are no longer granted those permissions. Likewise should
182: the copyright holder decide to "go commercial" he can not revoke permissions
183: already granted for the use of the work as distributed, though he may impose
184: more restrictive permissions in his future distributions of that work.
185: <p>
1.12 deraadt 186:
1.18 jufi 187: <li><h3><font color="#e00000">Specific Cases</font></h3><p>
1.12 deraadt 188:
1.1 grr 189: This section attempts to summarize the position of OpenBSD relative to
190: some commonly encountered copyrights.
1.12 deraadt 191: <p>
192:
1.1 grr 193: <dl>
194: <dt>Berkeley<dd><p>
195: The Berkeley copyright is the model for the OpenBSD copyright. It retains
196: the rights of the copyright holder, while imposing minimal conditions on
197: the use of the copyrighted material. Material with Berkeley copyrights,
1.3 grr 198: or copyrights closely adhering to the Berkeley model can generally be
199: included in OpenBSD.
1.12 deraadt 200: <p>
201:
1.1 grr 202: <dt>AT&T<dd><p>
1.19 millert 203: As part of its settlement with AT&T, Berkeley included an
204: AT&T copyright notice on some of the files in 4.4BSD lite and lite2.
205: The terms of this license are identical to the standard Berkeley license.
206: <p>
207: Additionally, OpenBSD includes some other AT&T code with non-restrictive
208: copyrights, such as the reference implementation of
209: <a href="http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/bwk/awk.tar.gz">awk</a>.
210: <p>
211:
212: <dt>Caldera<dd><p>
213: Caldera (now known as the SCO group) is the current owner of the Unix
214: code copyrights. On 23 January 2002, the original Unix code (versions 1
215: through seven, including 32V) was freed by Caldera. This code is now
216: available under a
217: <a href="http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf">4-term BSD-style license</a>.
218: As a result, it is now possible to incorporate real Unix code into OpenBSD
219: (though this code is quite old and generally requires significant changes
220: to bring it up to date).
1.12 deraadt 221: <p>
222:
1.1 grr 223: <dt>DEC, Sun, other manufacturers/software houses.<dd><p>
224: In general OpenBSD does not include material copyrighted by manufacturers
225: or software houses. Material may be included where the copyright owner has
226: granted general permission for reuse without conditions, with terms similar
227: to the Berkeley copyright, or where the material is the product of an
1.8 d 228: employee and the employer's copyright notice effectively releases any
1.1 grr 229: rights they might have to the work.
1.12 deraadt 230: <p>
231:
1.1 grr 232: <dt>Carnegie-Mellon (CMU, Mach)<dd><p>
233: The Carnegie-Mellon copyright is similar to the Berkeley copyright, except
234: that it requests that derivative works be made available to Carnegie-Mellon.
235: Because this is only a request and not a condition, such material can still
236: be included in OpenBSD. It should be noted that existing versions of Mach
237: are still subject to AT&T copyrights, which prevents the general
238: distribution of Mach sources.
1.12 deraadt 239: <p>
240:
1.11 millert 241: <dt>Apache<dd><p>
1.22 otto 242: The original Apache copyright is similar to the Berkeley copyright, except
1.11 millert 243: that it stipulates that products derived from the code may not
244: have "Apache" in their name. The purpose of this clause is to
245: avoid a situation in which another party releases a modified version
246: of the code named in such a way to make users think that it is the
247: "official" version. This is not an issue with OpenBSD because
248: OpenBSD is a <strong>Compilation</strong>, and not a
1.22 otto 249: <strong>Derived Work</strong>.
250: Source code published under version 2 of the Apache license cannot
251: be included into OpenBSD. As a consequence, OpenBSD now maintains
1.23 tom 252: its own version of Apache based on version 1.3.29. The OpenBSD
1.22 otto 253: version includes many enhancements and bugfixes.
1.12 deraadt 254: <p>
255:
1.19 millert 256: <dt>ISC<dd><p>
257: The ISC copyright is functionally equivalent to a two-term BSD
258: copyright with language removed that is made unnecessary by the
259: Berne convention. This is the preferred license for new code
260: incorporated into OpenBSD. A sample license is included in
1.26 ! lum 261: the source tree as
! 262: <a href="http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/src/share/misc/license.template?rev=HEAD">
! 263: <tt>/usr/src/share/misc/license.template</tt></a>.
1.19 millert 264: <p>
265:
1.3 grr 266: <dt>GNU General Public License, GPL, LGPL, copyleft, etc.<dd><p>
1.1 grr 267: The GNU Public License and licenses modeled on it impose the restriction
268: that source code must be distributed or made available for all works that
1.3 grr 269: are derivatives of the GNU copyrighted code.
270: <p>
1.12 deraadt 271:
1.3 grr 272: While this may be a noble strategy in terms of software sharing, it is a
273: condition that is typically unacceptable for commercial use of software.
274: As a consequence, software bound by the GPL terms can not be included in
1.7 deraadt 275: the kernel or "runtime" of OpenBSD, though software subject to GPL terms
1.8 d 276: may be included as development tools or as part of the system that are
1.3 grr 277: "optional" as long as such use does not result in OpenBSD as a whole
278: becoming subject to the GPL terms.
279: <p>
1.12 deraadt 280:
1.25 tedu 281: As an example, GCC and other GNU tools are included in the OpenBSD
282: tool chain. However, it is quite possible to distribute a system for
283: many applications without a tool chain, or the distributor can choose
284: to include a tool chain as an optional bundle which conforms to the
285: GPL terms.
1.3 grr 286: <p>
1.12 deraadt 287:
1.1 grr 288: <dt>NetBSD<dd><p>
1.5 todd 289: Much of OpenBSD is originally based on and evolved from NetBSD, since some
1.3 grr 290: of the OpenBSD developers were involved in the NetBSD project. The general
291: NetBSD license terms are compatible with the Berkeley license and permit
292: such use. Material subject <strong>only</strong> to the general NetBSD
293: license can generally be included in OpenBSD.
294: <p>
1.12 deraadt 295:
1.11 millert 296: In the past, NetBSD has included material copyrighted by individuals
297: who have imposed license conditions beyond that of the general
298: NetBSD license, but granted the NetBSD Foundation license to
299: distribute the material. Such material can not be included in
300: OpenBSD as long as the conditions imposed are at odds with the
301: OpenBSD license terms or releases from those terms are offered on
302: a discriminatory basis.
1.12 deraadt 303: <p>
304:
1.1 grr 305: <dt>FreeBSD<dd><p>
1.3 grr 306: Most of FreeBSD is also based on Berkeley licensed material or includes
1.2 grr 307: copyright notices based on the Berkeley model. Such material can be
1.3 grr 308: included in OpenBSD, while those parts that are subject to GPL or
309: various individual copyright terms that are at odds with the OpenBSD license
310: can not be included in OpenBSD.
1.12 deraadt 311: <p>
312:
1.1 grr 313: <dt>Linux<dd><p>
314: Most of Linux is subject to GPL style licensing terms and therefore
1.2 grr 315: can not be included in OpenBSD. Individual components may be eligible,
1.1 grr 316: subject to the terms of the originator's copyright notices. Note that
1.8 d 317: Linux "distributions" may also be subject to additional copyright claims
1.1 grr 318: of the distributing organization, either as a compilation or on material
1.3 grr 319: included that is not part of the Linux core.
1.12 deraadt 320: <p>
321:
1.24 matthieu 322: <dt>X, XFree86, X.Org<dd><p>
323: X, X.Org or XFree86 are not parts of OpenBSD, rather X.Org and parts of
324: XFree86 3.3.6 are distributed
1.3 grr 325: with many OpenBSD ports as a convenience to the user, subject to applicable
326: license terms.
1.12 deraadt 327: <p>
328:
1.1 grr 329: <dt>Shareware, Charityware, Freeware, etc.<dd><p>
330: Most "shareware" copyright notices impose conditions for redistribution,
331: use or visibility that are at conflict with the OpenBSD project goals.
332: Review on a case-by-case basis is required as to whether the wording
1.2 grr 333: of the conditions is acceptable in terms of conditions being requested vs.
1.1 grr 334: demanded and whether the spirit of the conditions is compatible with
1.2 grr 335: goals of the OpenBSD project.
1.12 deraadt 336: <p>
337:
1.1 grr 338: <dt>Public Domain<dd><p>
339: While material that is truly entered into the "Public Domain" can be
340: included in OpenBSD, review is required on a case by case basis.
1.3 grr 341: Frequently the "public domain" assertion is made by someone who does
342: not really hold all rights under Copyright law to grant that status or
1.1 grr 343: there are a variety of conditions imposed on use. For a work to be
1.3 grr 344: truly in the "Public Domain" all rights are abandoned and the material
345: is offered without restrictions.
1.12 deraadt 346: <p>
347:
348: </dl>
349:
1.18 jufi 350: </ul>
1.1 grr 351:
352: <hr>
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354: <a href="mailto:www@openbsd.org">www@openbsd.org</a>
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