On Wed, Sep 17, 2003 at 06:57:37PM +0530, Kamal R Prasad wrote:
> >What do you mean by "wins"? If you mean mean that you want to develop 
> >proprietary software, it's hard to find a place where the BSD license
> >doesn't win (except possibly in the advertising clause). 
> 
> wins meaning - a good reason to opt for writing stuff in the BSD 
> environment rather than in Linux. The folks Im working with are familiar 
> with Linux, not with *BSD and I have to give them a good reason why the 
> GPL won't do.
[snip]
> We are working on a prototype -which may or may not have commercial value.
> If the prototype is viable -the company charges money from others for 
> using the functionality [src code not revealed]. If not, we still do not 
> want to give away the src code -but may not earn any money in doing so. 
> The GPL probably makes things difficult in the first case, but is 
> equivalent to the BSD license in the 2nd case [ie no obligation to reveal 
> the in-house development to anybody]. If this isn't the case, pl. clarify.

I was kind of hoping that you'd be more specific as to the nature of
the code. Earlier, you mentioned something about kernel modules. It
is legally quite possible to make proprietary modules for the Linux
kernel - your company's code would not be subject to the GPL, just
because it uses the public interfaces of the Linux kernel.

However, you still could not use any code from GPL'd sources. This is
where the BSD license would be advantageous: if there was a piece of
BSD code that did something similar to what you're trying to achieve,
you could simply copy and adapt it, provided you didn't remove the
copyright. Copying GPL'd code would force you to release any and
all of your own code that was linked to the copied code.

To get a good answer, you'll need to say how your program relates to
other code: is it a kernel module, a userland program, or what?

Finally, I should say that this thread has gone beyond the scope of
tech-kern. If you want more information on the advantages of NetBSD,
reply to netbsd-advocacy. If you want more information about the
GPL, ask on a Linux or GNU newsgroup, and they will discuss it with
you in great detail...
-- 
Bruce J.A. Nourish <bjan+public@bjan.net> http://bjan.net