*BSD News Article 80506


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From: John Dyson <dyson@freebsd.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: License number
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 10:49:50 -0500
Organization: John S. Dyson's home machine
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Message-ID: <325FBE1E.41C67EA6@freebsd.org>
References: <325F0948.27F5@dznet.com>
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Doney Jimenez wrote:
> 
> Hello all.
> Does anybody know for how many users is the license that comes with
> FREEBSD?
> Does FREEBSD have NFS?
> Thanks you all.

On FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD/Linux, it isn't a license limitation, it is
a hardware/software interaction limitation.  In Microsoft-eze, with
the free U**X clones, you have an unlimited license, with absolutely
no per user/client license fee.  As a user or developer of FreeBSD,
you have practically the same rights to the released software as the
various core team members do.  You can even strike off on your
own and create Doney-BSD if you want with the FreeBSD sources.  I
believe that there are few (if any) tools that are restrictively
copyrighted, and those would only be install tools...  There
are some commercial bits from other sources that *might* disallow
further redistribution -- but those aren't actually a direct part
of FreeBSD either, but are distributed as a convienience for the
end-user and for the company promoting their products.

John
dyson@freebsd.org