ROS Resources: Documentation | Support | Discussion Forum | Index | Service Status | ros @ Robotics Stack Exchange |
1 | initial version |
Of course, when asking legal questions of a user's group, the resulting advice is worth at best exactly what you paid for and at worst, there's not bottom limit.
Now let me tell you my half-cocked <= $0.0 interpretation.
Yes, the BSD language isn't completely clear and could be read in a way that BSD is a bad bad viral license invalidating and making free anything you've ever done or thought of doing. You will find user group discussions to this effect if you spend too much time on the web as do I.
However, the clear and commonly understood intent of the BSD license is: Make hay! Use and abuse the code any way you want.
Many big companies with their buildings of bored corporate lawyers seem to use BSD and interpret it in the make hay way. Berkeley itself holds this view (so I've read by someone who's grandmother told her that she heard it from someone who knew). I suspect that most uses of BSD code doesn't even include the BSD conditions. A bunch of things that use OpenCV don't include the BSD verbiage and one day I intend to hold absolutely ... none of them accountable. I can't speak for the ROS developers, but I've seen them shudder with religious ecstasy every time someone even thinks about using ROS ... so I'm guessing they'll let BSD slide.
2 | No.2 Revision |
Of course, when asking legal questions of a user's group, the resulting advice is worth at best exactly what you paid for and at worst, there's not bottom limit.
Now let me tell you my half-cocked <= $0.0 interpretation.
Yes, the BSD language isn't completely clear clear. In general when incorporating open source software within a product the best practice is to collect the licenses and could be read embed them with the binary distributed. If you are distributing a package with multiple files it's common to have a directory which includes all the relevant licenses. Or for binaries that are distributed there is often a menu item in the Help -> About region that lists the licenses of software used within the product. Including the license text in either case is relatively low overhead so I'd recommend doing it both as a way library or statically linked in. This is the conservative option and means that BSD is a bad bad viral license invalidating and making free anything you've ever done or thought of doing. You will find user group discussions you don't need to this effect if you spend too much time on worry about the web as do I.underlying legal question.
However, the clear and commonly understood intent of the BSD license is: Make hay! Use and abuse the code any way you want.
Many big companies with their buildings of bored corporate lawyers seem to use BSD and interpret it in the make hay way. Berkeley itself holds this view (so I've read by someone who's grandmother told her that she heard it from someone who knew). I suspect that most uses of BSD code doesn't even include the BSD conditions. A bunch of things that use OpenCV don't include the BSD verbiage and one day I intend to hold absolutely ... none of them accountable. I can't speak for the ROS developers, but I've seen them shudder with religious ecstasy every time someone even thinks about using ROS ... so I'm guessing they'll let BSD slide.