Some BSD licenses additionally include a clause that restricts the use of the name of the project (or the names of its contributors) for endorsing or promoting derivative works.
The most basic definition of a derivative work is a product that is based on, or incorporates, one or more already existing works. This can become a complex issue, particularly with regard to software, but the primary indicator that a software program is a derivative of another program is if it includes source code from the original program, even if the source code has been modified, including improving, extending, reordering or translating it into another programming language.
Source code is the version of software (usually an application program or an operating system) as it is originally written (i.e., typed into a computer) by a human in plain text (i.e., human readable alphanumeric characters). Source code can be written in any of hundreds of programming languages, some of the most popular of which are C, C++ and Java.
Due to the extremely minimal restrictions of
It is possible for a product to be distributed under a
BSD Licenses Versus the GPL
The GPL (GNU General Public License) is by far the most widely used license for free software (i.e., software whose source code is available at no cost for anyone to use for any purpose). The Linux kernel (i.e., the core of the operating system) as well as much of the other software generally included in Linux distributions have been released under the terms of the GPL.
Although far fewer programs are released under
Possibly the biggest difference between the GPL and BSD licenses is the fact that the former is a copyleft license and the latter is not. Copyleft is the application of copyright law to permit the free creation of derivative works but requiring that such works be redistributable under the same terms (i.e., the same license) as the original work.
Closely related to this is the fact that, in sharp contrast to the GPL,
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