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5 <title>OpenBSD: Copyright Policy</title>
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15
16 <h2 id=OpenBSD>
17 <a href="index.html">
18 <i>Open</i><b>BSD</b></a>
19 Copyright Policy
20 </h2>
21
22 <hr>
23
24 <h3>Goal</h3>
25
26 <p>
27 Copyright law is complex, OpenBSD policy is simple — OpenBSD strives to
28 provide code that can be freely used, copied, modified, and distributed
29 by anyone and for any purpose. This maintains the spirit of the original
30 Berkeley Software Distribution. The preferred wording of a license to be
31 applied to new code can be found in the
32 <a href="https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/share/misc/license.template?rev=HEAD">license template</a>.
33
34 <p>
35 OpenBSD can exist as it does today because of the example set by the
36 Computer Systems Research Group at Berkeley and the battles which they
37 and others fought to create a Unix source distribution un-encumbered
38 by proprietary code and commercial licensing.
39
40 <p>
41 The ability of a <strong>freely redistributable</strong> "Berkeley" Unix
42 to move forward on a competitive basis with other operating systems depends
43 on the willingness of the various development groups to exchange code amongst
44 themselves and with other projects.
45 Understanding the legal issues surrounding copyright is fundamental to
46 the ability to exchange and re-distribute code, while honoring the spirit of
47 the copyright and concept of attribution is fundamental to promoting the
48 cooperation of the people involved.
49
50 <h3>The Berkeley Copyright</h3>
51
52 <p>
53 The original Berkeley copyright poses no restrictions on private or commercial
54 use of the software and imposes only simple and uniform requirements
55 for maintaining copyright notices in redistributed versions and
56 crediting the originator of the material <strong>only</strong> in
57 advertising.
58 <p>
59 For instance:
60 <p>
61 <pre>
62 * Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1993
63 * The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
64 *
65 * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
66 * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
67 * are met:
68 * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
69 * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
70 * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
71 * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
72 * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
73 * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
74 * must display the following acknowledgement:
75 * This product includes software developed by the University of
76 * California, Berkeley and its contributors.
77 * 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
78 * may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
79 * without specific prior written permission.
80 *
81 * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
82 * ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
83 * IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
84 * ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
85 * FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
86 * DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
87 * OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
88 * HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
89 * LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
90 * OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
91 * SUCH DAMAGE.
92 *
93 </pre>
94 <p>
95 Berkeley rescinded the 3rd term (the advertising term) on 22 July 1999.
96 Verbatim copies of the Berkeley license in the OpenBSD tree have that
97 term removed. In addition, many 3rd-party BSD-style licenses consist
98 solely of the first two terms.
99 <p>
100 Because the OpenBSD copyright imposes no conditions beyond those
101 imposed by the Berkeley copyright, OpenBSD can hope to share the same
102 wide distribution and applicability as the Berkeley distributions.
103 It follows however, that OpenBSD cannot include material which
104 includes copyrights which are more restrictive than the Berkeley
105 copyright, or must relegate this material to a secondary status,
106 i.e. OpenBSD as a whole is freely redistributable, but some optional
107 components may not be.
108
109 <h3>Copyright Law</h3>
110
111 <p>
112 While the overall subject of copyright law is far beyond the scope of
113 this document, some basics are in order. Under the current copyright law,
114 copyrights are implicit in the creation of a new work and reside with
115 the creator. In general the copyright applies
116 only to the new work, not the material the work was derived from, nor
117 those portions of the derivative material included in the new work.
118
119 <p>
120 Copyright law admits to three general categories of works:
121 <dl>
122 <dt>Original Work
123 <dd>A new work that is not derived from an existing work.
124 <dt>Derivative Work
125 <dd>Work that is derived from, includes or amends existing works.
126 <dt>Compilation
127 <dd>A work that is a compilation of existing new and derivative works.
128 </dl>
129
130 <p>
131 The fundamental concept is that there is primacy of the copyright, that
132 is a copyright of a derivative work does not affect the rights held by
133 the owner of the copyright of the original work, rather only the part
134 added. Likewise the copyright of a compilation does not affect the rights
135 of the owner of the included works, only the compilation as an entity.
136
137 <p>
138 It is vitally important to understand that copyrights are broad protections
139 as defined by national and international copyright law. The "copyright
140 notices" usually included in source files are not copyrights, but rather
141 notices that a party asserts that they hold copyright to the material or
142 to part of the material. Typically these notices are associated with
143 license terms which grant permissions subject to copyright law and with
144 disclaimers that state the position of the copyright holder/distributor
145 with respect to liability surrounding use of the material.
146
147 <p>
148 By international law, specifically the Berne Convention for the
149 Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, part of the author's
150 copyright, the so-called moral rights, are inalienable. This
151 includes the author's right "to claim authorship of the work and
152 to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of,
153 or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which
154 would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation". In some countries,
155 the law reserves additional inalienable moral rights to the author.
156 On the other hand, the author is free to transfer other parts
157 of his copyright, the so-called economic rights, in particular the
158 rights to use, copy, modify, distribute, and license the work.
159
160 <h3>Permissions — the flip side</h3>
161
162 <p>
163 Because copyrights arise from the creation of a work, rather than through
164 a registration process, there needs to be a practical way to extend
165 permission to use a work beyond what might be allowed by "fair use"
166 provisions of the copyright laws.
167
168 <p>
169 This permission typically takes the form of a "release" or "license"
170 included in the work, which grants the additional uses beyond those
171 granted by copyright law, usually subject to a variety of conditions.
172 At one extreme sits "public domain" where the originator asserts that
173 he imposes no restrictions on use of the material, at the other
174 restrictive clauses that actually grant no additional rights or impose
175 restrictive, discriminatory or impractical conditions on use of the work.
176
177 <p>
178 Note that a license is not to be confused with a copyright transfer.
179 While a transfer would give the new copyright holder <em>exclusive</em>
180 rights to use the code and take these rights away from the author,
181 a license typically grants <em>additional</em> people non-exclusive
182 rights to use the code, while the authors retain all their rights.
183
184 <p>
185 The above observations regarding moral rights imply that putting
186 code under an ISC or two-clause BSD license essentially makes the
187 code as free as it can possibly get. Modifying the wording of these
188 licenses can only result in one of the three following effects:
189
190 <ul>
191 <li>making the code less free by adding additional restrictions
192 regarding its use, copying, modification or distribution;
193 <li>or effectively not changing anything by merely changing the wording,
194 but not changing anything substantial regarding the legal content;
195 <li>or making the license illegal by attempting to deprive the
196 authors of rights they cannot legally give away.
197 </ul>
198
199 <p>
200 Again, an important point to note is that the release and conditions can
201 only apply to the portion of the work that was originated by the copyright
202 holder—the holder of a copyright on a derivative work can neither
203 grant additional permissions for use of the original work, nor impose more
204 restrictive conditions for use of that work.
205
206 <p>
207 Because copyright arises from the creation of a work and not the text
208 or a registration process, removing or altering a copyright notice or
209 associated release terms has no bearing on the existence of the copyright,
210 rather all that is accomplished is to cast doubt upon whatever rights the
211 person making the modifications had to use the material in the first place.
212 Likewise, adding terms and conditions in conflict with the original terms
213 and conditions does not supersede them, rather it casts doubts on the rights
214 of the person making the amendments to use the material and creates confusion
215 as to whether anyone can use the amended version or derivatives thereof.
216
217 <p>
218 Finally, releases are generally binding on the material that they
219 are distributed with. This means that if the originator of a work distributes
220 that work with a release granting certain permissions, those permissions
221 apply as stated, without discrimination, to all persons legitimately
222 possessing a copy of the work. That means that having granted a permission,
223 the copyright holder can not retroactively say that an individual or class
224 of individuals are no longer granted those permissions. Likewise should
225 the copyright holder decide to "go commercial" he can not revoke permissions
226 already granted for the use of the work as distributed, though he may impose
227 more restrictive permissions in his future distributions of that work.
228
229 <h3>Specific Cases</h3>
230
231 <p>
232 This section attempts to summarize the position of OpenBSD relative to
233 some commonly encountered copyrights.
234
235 <dl>
236 <dt>Berkeley<dd><p>
237 The Berkeley copyright is the model for the OpenBSD copyright. It retains
238 the rights of the copyright holder, while imposing minimal conditions on
239 the use of the copyrighted material. Material with Berkeley copyrights,
240 or copyrights closely adhering to the Berkeley model can generally be
241 included in OpenBSD.
242 <p>
243
244 <dt>AT&T<dd><p>
245 As part of its settlement with AT&T, Berkeley included an
246 AT&T copyright notice on some of the files in 4.4BSD lite and lite2.
247 The terms of this license are identical to the standard Berkeley license.
248 <p>
249 Additionally, OpenBSD includes some other AT&T code with non-restrictive
250 copyrights, such as the reference implementation of
251 <a href="https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk">awk</a>.
252 <p>
253
254 <dt>Caldera<dd><p>
255 The original Unix code (AT&T versions 1 through 7 UNIX, including 32V)
256 was freed by Caldera, Inc. on 23 January 2002 and is now available under a
257 <a href="http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf">4-term BSD-style license</a>.
258 As a result, it would theoretically be possible to incorporate original
259 Unix code into OpenBSD. However, that code is now so old that it does not
260 satisfy today's interface and quality standards.
261 <p>
262
263 <dt>DEC, Sun, other manufacturers/software houses.<dd><p>
264 In general OpenBSD does not include material copyrighted by manufacturers
265 or software houses. Material may be included where the copyright owner has
266 granted general permission for reuse without conditions, with terms similar
267 to the Berkeley copyright, or where the material is the product of an
268 employee and the employer's copyright notice effectively releases any
269 rights they might have to the work.
270 <p>
271
272 <dt>Carnegie-Mellon (CMU, Mach)<dd><p>
273 The Carnegie-Mellon copyright is similar to the Berkeley copyright, except
274 that it requests that derivative works be made available to Carnegie-Mellon.
275 Because this is only a request and not a condition, such material can still
276 be included in OpenBSD. It should be noted that existing versions of Mach
277 are still subject to AT&T copyrights, which prevents the general
278 distribution of Mach sources.
279 <p>
280
281 <dt>Apache<dd><p>
282 The original Apache license was similar to the Berkeley license,
283 but source code published under version 2 of the Apache license is
284 subject to additional restrictions and cannot be included into OpenBSD.
285 In particular, if you use code under the Apache 2 license, some of
286 your rights will terminate if you claim in court that the code
287 violates a patent.
288 <p>
289
290 A license can only be considered fully permissive if it allows use
291 by anyone for all the future without giving up any of their rights.
292 If there are conditions that might terminate any rights in the
293 future, or if you have to give up a right that you would otherwise
294 have, even if exercising that right could reasonably be regarded
295 as morally objectionable, the code is not free.
296 <p>
297
298 In addition, the clause about the patent license is problematic because
299 a patent license cannot be granted under Copyright law, but only under
300 contract law, which drags the whole license into the domain of contract
301 law. But while Copyright law is somewhat standardized by international
302 agreements, contract law differs wildly among jurisdictions. So what
303 the license means in different jurisdictions may vary and is hard to
304 predict.
305 <p>
306
307 <dt>ISC<dd><p>
308 The ISC copyright is functionally equivalent to a two-term BSD
309 copyright with language removed that is made unnecessary by the
310 Berne convention. This is the preferred license for new code
311 incorporated into OpenBSD. A sample license is available in the file
312 <a href="https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/share/misc/license.template?rev=HEAD">/usr/share/misc/license.template</a>.
313 <p>
314
315 <dt>GNU General Public License, GPL, LGPL, copyleft, etc.<dd><p>
316 The GNU Public License and licenses modeled on it impose the restriction
317 that source code must be distributed or made available for all works that
318 are derivatives of the GNU copyrighted code.
319
320 <p>
321 While this may superficially look like a noble strategy, it is a
322 condition that is typically unacceptable for commercial use of software.
323 So in practice, it usually ends up hindering free sharing and reuse
324 of code and ideas rather than encouraging it.
325 As a consequence, no additional software bound by the GPL terms
326 will be considered for inclusion into the OpenBSD base system.
327
328 <p>
329 For historical reasons, the OpenBSD base system still includes the
330 following GPL-licensed components: the GNU compiler collection (GCC)
331 with supporting binutils and libraries, GNU CVS, GNU texinfo,
332 the mkhybrid file system creation tool, and the
333 readline library. Replacement by equivalent, more freely licensed
334 tools is a long-term desideratum.
335 <p>
336
337 <dt>NetBSD<dd><p>
338 Much of OpenBSD is originally based on and evolved from NetBSD, since some
339 of the OpenBSD developers were involved in the NetBSD project. The general
340 NetBSD license terms are compatible with the Berkeley license and permit
341 such use. Material subject <strong>only</strong> to the general NetBSD
342 license can generally be included in OpenBSD.
343 <p>
344
345 In the past, NetBSD has included material copyrighted by individuals
346 who have imposed license conditions beyond that of the general
347 NetBSD license, but granted the NetBSD Foundation license to
348 distribute the material. Such material can not be included in
349 OpenBSD as long as the conditions imposed are at odds with the
350 OpenBSD license terms or releases from those terms are offered on
351 a discriminatory basis.
352 <p>
353
354 <dt>FreeBSD<dd><p>
355 Most of FreeBSD is also based on Berkeley licensed material or includes
356 copyright notices based on the Berkeley model. Such material can be
357 included in OpenBSD, while those parts that are subject to GPL or
358 various individual copyright terms that are at odds with the OpenBSD license
359 can not be included in OpenBSD.
360 <p>
361
362 <dt>Linux<dd><p>
363 Most of Linux is subject to GPL style licensing terms and therefore
364 can not be included in OpenBSD. Individual components may be eligible,
365 subject to the terms of the originator's copyright notices. Note that
366 Linux "distributions" may also be subject to additional copyright claims
367 of the distributing organization, either as a compilation or on material
368 included that is not part of the Linux core.
369 <p>
370
371 <dt>X.Org<dd><p>
372 The X.Org Foundation maintains and distributes the X Window System
373 under a modified MIT license, which is quite similar to the BSD
374 license and additionally allows sublicensing. Under the name of
375 Xenocara, the OpenBSD base system includes an improved and actively
376 maintained version of the X.Org code.
377 <p>
378
379 <dt>Shareware, Charityware, Freeware, etc.<dd><p>
380 Most "shareware" copyright notices impose conditions for redistribution,
381 use or visibility that are at conflict with the OpenBSD project goals.
382 Review on a case-by-case basis is required as to whether the wording
383 of the conditions is acceptable in terms of conditions being requested vs.
384 demanded and whether the spirit of the conditions is compatible with
385 goals of the OpenBSD project.
386 <p>
387
388 <dt>Public Domain<dd><p>
389 While material that is truly entered into the "public domain" can be
390 included in OpenBSD, review is required on a case by case basis.
391 Frequently the "public domain" assertion is made by someone who does
392 not really hold all rights under copyright law to grant that status or
393 there are a variety of conditions imposed on use. For a work to be
394 truly in the "public domain" all rights are abandoned and the material
395 is offered without restrictions.
396 <p>
397
398 In some jurisdictions, it is doubtful whether voluntarily placing
399 one's own work into the public domain is legally possible.
400 For that reason, to make any substantial body of code free,
401 it is preferable to state the copyright and put it under an ISC
402 or BSD license instead of attempting to release it into the public
403 domain.
404
405 </dl>