| > No, they're not. Software released under the BSD and GPL licenses would both be considered "open source", but only the latter is Free (per RMS' and FSF's definitions of "Free"), for many significant reasons. Well, no. All three versions of the BSD license are recognized by the FSF as "free software licenses"; only two of them are OSI-approved "Open Source" licenses, 1. The original four-clause license, which is neither an OSI approved Open Source license (apparently its never been submitted for review -- OSI, unlike FSF, does its reviews based on submissions, rather than on its own initiative) [0] but is an FSF-recognized Free Software license. [1] 2. The three-clause BSD license, which is both an OSI approved Open Source license [2] and recognized by the FSF as "a lax, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL." [3] 3. The two-clause BSD license, which is both an OSI approved Open Source license [4] and recognized by the FSF as "a lax, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL." [5] [0] http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause ("The original license used on BSD Unix had four clauses. [...] The four clause license has not been approved by OSI.") [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD [2] http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause [3] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ModifiedBSD [4] http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause [5] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#FreeBSD |