• Some releases of BSD prior to the adoption of the 4-clause BSD license used a license that is clearly ancestral to the 4-clause BSD license.
  • The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system.
  • Note: This license has also been called the “New BSD License” or “Modified BSD License”. See also the 2-clause BSD License.
  • Overall, the BSD License is a popular choice for open-source projects that value flexibility and minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of their software.
  • 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.
  • Most of them are equivalent except for details of wording, but the license used for BSD until 1999 had a special problem: the “obnoxious BSD advertising clause.”
  • This initial version, known as the 4-Clause BSD license, isn’t used much today, nor is the 0-Clause variant (which is essentially a public-domain-equivalent license).
  • BSD licensing means free, permissive licenses for open-source software, with low restrictions regarding the use and distribution of the licensed software.
  • BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the redistribution of covered software.