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by einr 412 days ago
True! And if so, that license has clearly been broken many times by everyone selling 386BSD, NetBSD and Linux <0.12 on CD-ROMs etc ;)

Then again -- and IANAL -- the license is worded so vaguely that I doubt any of it is enforcible. "You may not distibute this for a fee" -- what is "this"? Is it the entire kernel or does it apply to small excerpts of it? Because apparently "small partial excerpts may be copied without bothering with copyrights". But do you mean copyright attribution or are you rescinding your copyright entirely if I only copy "small partial excerpts"? But what is a small partial excerpt? And so on and so forth...
2 comments
LeFantome 412 days ago
“this” is the code that Linus licensed as he did. Only that code. If you use a snippet, that snippet is governed by the license. The license does not magically extend to other code or even to any modifications that have been made since. This is not the GPL.
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wkat4242 412 days ago
I think nikanj means that this is not a stipulation of the BSD license at all, that's why it's not compatible with what Linus made there.
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LeFantome 412 days ago
But the Linus license has no bearing on the rest of the code base at all.

The entire concept of “compatibility” is an artifact of copyleft. In the rest of the license universe, each piece of code is covered by its own license and it does not matter what licenses other code uses.

This license does not apply to the rest of BSD. The BSD license does not apply to this code.

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