OpenBSD Copyright Policy
https://www.openbsd.org/policy.html

  Goal

   Copyright law is complex, OpenBSD policy is simple â OpenBSD
   strives to provide code that can be freely used, copied, modified,
   and distributed by anyone and for any purpose. This maintains the
   spirit of the original Berkeley Software Distribution. The
   preferred wording of a license to be applied to new code can be
   found in the license template.

   OpenBSD can exist as it does today because of the example set by
   the Computer Systems Research Group at Berkeley and the battles
   which they and others fought to create a Unix source distribution
   un-encumbered by proprietary code and commercial licensing.

   The ability of a freely redistributable "Berkeley" Unix to move
   forward on a competitive basis with other operating systems
   depends on the willingness of the various development groups to
   exchange code amongst themselves and with other projects.
   Understanding the legal issues surrounding copyright is
   fundamental to the ability to exchange and re-distribute code,
   while honoring the spirit of the copyright and concept of
   attribution is fundamental to promoting the cooperation of the
   people involved.

  The Berkeley Copyright

   The original Berkeley copyright poses no restrictions on private
   or commercial use of the software and imposes only simple and
   uniform requirements for maintaining copyright notices in
   redistributed versions and crediting the originator of the
   material only in advertising.

   For instance:

  * Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1993
  *      The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
  *
  * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
  * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
  * are met:
  * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
  *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
  *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
  *    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
  *    must display the following acknowledgement:
  *      This product includes software developed by the University of
  *      California, Berkeley and its contributors.
  * 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
  *    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
  *    without specific prior written permission.
  *
  * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
  * ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
  * IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
  * ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
  * FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
  * DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
  * OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
  * HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
  * LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
  * OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
  * SUCH DAMAGE.
  *

   Berkeley rescinded the 3rd term (the advertising term) on 22 July
   1999. Verbatim copies of the Berkeley license in the OpenBSD tree
   have that term removed. In addition, many 3rd-party BSD-style
   licenses consist solely of the first two terms.

   Because the OpenBSD copyright imposes no conditions beyond those
   imposed by the Berkeley copyright, OpenBSD can hope to share the
   same wide distribution and applicability as the Berkeley
   distributions. It follows however, that OpenBSD cannot include
   material which includes copyrights which are more restrictive than
   the Berkeley copyright, or must relegate this material to a
   secondary status, i.e. OpenBSD as a whole is freely
   redistributable, but some optional components may not be.

  Copyright Law

   While the overall subject of copyright law is far beyond the scope
   of this document, some basics are in order. Under the current
   copyright law, copyrights are implicit in the creation of a new
   work and reside with the creator. In general the copyright applies
   only to the new work, not the material the work was derived from,
   nor those portions of the derivative material included in the new
   work.

   Copyright law admits to three general categories of works:

   Original Work
           A new work that is not derived from an existing work.

   Derivative Work
           Work that is derived from, includes or amends existing
           works.

   Compilation
           A work that is a compilation of existing new and
           derivative works.

   The fundamental concept is that there is primacy of the copyright,
   that is a copyright of a derivative work does not affect the
   rights held by the owner of the copyright of the original work,
   rather only the part added. Likewise the copyright of a
   compilation does not affect the rights of the owner of the
   included works, only the compilation as an entity.

   It is vitally important to understand that copyrights are broad
   protections as defined by national and international copyright
   law. The "copyright notices" usually included in source files are
   not copyrights, but rather notices that a party asserts that they
   hold copyright to the material or to part of the material.
   Typically these notices are associated with license terms which
   grant permissions subject to copyright law and with disclaimers
   that state the position of the copyright holder/distributor with
   respect to liability surrounding use of the material.

   By international law, specifically the Berne Convention for the
   Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, part of the author's
   copyright, the so-called moral rights, are inalienable. This
   includes the author's right "to claim authorship of the work and
   to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of,
   or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which
   would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation". In some
   countries, the law reserves additional inalienable moral rights to
   the author. On the other hand, the author is free to transfer
   other parts of his copyright, the so-called economic rights, in
   particular the rights to use, copy, modify, distribute, and
   license the work.

  Permissions â the flip side

   Because copyrights arise from the creation of a work, rather than
   through a registration process, there needs to be a practical way
   to extend permission to use a work beyond what might be allowed by
   "fair use" provisions of the copyright laws.

   This permission typically takes the form of a "release" or
   "license" included in the work, which grants the additional uses
   beyond those granted by copyright law, usually subject to a
   variety of conditions. At one extreme sits "public domain" where
   the originator asserts that he imposes no restrictions on use of
   the material, at the other restrictive clauses that actually grant
   no additional rights or impose restrictive, discriminatory or
   impractical conditions on use of the work.

   Note that a license is not to be confused with a copyright
   transfer. While a transfer would give the new copyright holder
   exclusive rights to use the code and take these rights away from
   the author, a license typically grants additional people
   non-exclusive rights to use the code, while the authors retain all
   their rights.

   The above observations regarding moral rights imply that putting
   code under an ISC or two-clause BSD license essentially makes the
   code as free as it can possibly get. Modifying the wording of
   these licenses can only result in one of the three following
   effects:
     * making the code less free by adding additional restrictions
       regarding its use, copying, modification or distribution;
     * or effectively not changing anything by merely changing the
       wording, but not changing anything substantial regarding the
       legal content;
     * or making the license illegal by attempting to deprive the
       authors of rights they cannot legally give away.

   Again, an important point to note is that the release and
   conditions can only apply to the portion of the work that was
   originated by the copyright holderâthe holder of a copyright on a
   derivative work can neither grant additional permissions for use
   of the original work, nor impose more restrictive conditions for
   use of that work.

   Because copyright arises from the creation of a work and not the
   text or a registration process, removing or altering a copyright
   notice or associated release terms has no bearing on the existence
   of the copyright, rather all that is accomplished is to cast doubt
   upon whatever rights the person making the modifications had to
   use the material in the first place. Likewise, adding terms and
   conditions in conflict with the original terms and conditions does
   not supersede them, rather it casts doubts on the rights of the
   person making the amendments to use the material and creates
   confusion as to whether anyone can use the amended version or
   derivatives thereof.

   Finally, releases are generally binding on the material that they
   are distributed with. This means that if the originator of a work
   distributes that work with a release granting certain permissions,
   those permissions apply as stated, without discrimination, to all
   persons legitimately possessing a copy of the work. That means
   that having granted a permission, the copyright holder can not
   retroactively say that an individual or class of individuals are
   no longer granted those permissions. Likewise should the copyright
   holder decide to "go commercial" he can not revoke permissions
   already granted for the use of the work as distributed, though he
   may impose more restrictive permissions in his future
   distributions of that work.

  Specific Cases

   This section attempts to summarize the position of OpenBSD
   relative to some commonly encountered copyrights.

   Berkeley

           The Berkeley copyright is the model for the OpenBSD
           copyright. It retains the rights of the copyright holder,
           while imposing minimal conditions on the use of the
           copyrighted material. Material with Berkeley copyrights,
           or copyrights closely adhering to the Berkeley model can
           generally be included in OpenBSD.

   AT&T

           As part of its settlement with AT&T, Berkeley included an
           AT&T copyright notice on some of the files in 4.4BSD lite
           and lite2. The terms of this license are identical to the
           standard Berkeley license.

           Additionally, OpenBSD includes some other AT&T code with
           non-restrictive copyrights, such as the reference
           implementation of awk.

   Caldera

           The original Unix code (AT&T versions 1 through 7 UNIX,
           including 32V) was freed by Caldera, Inc. on 23 January
           2002 and is now available under a 4-term BSD-style
           license. As a result, it would theoretically be possible
           to incorporate original Unix code into OpenBSD. However,
           that code is now so old that it does not satisfy today's
           interface and quality standards.

   DEC, Sun, other manufacturers/software houses.

           In general OpenBSD does not include material copyrighted
           by manufacturers or software houses. Material may be
           included where the copyright owner has granted general
           permission for reuse without conditions, with terms
           similar to the Berkeley copyright, or where the material
           is the product of an employee and the employer's copyright
           notice effectively releases any rights they might have to
           the work.

   Carnegie-Mellon (CMU, Mach)

           The Carnegie-Mellon copyright is similar to the Berkeley
           copyright, except that it requests that derivative works
           be made available to Carnegie-Mellon. Because this is only
           a request and not a condition, such material can still be
           included in OpenBSD. It should be noted that existing
           versions of Mach are still subject to AT&T copyrights,
           which prevents the general distribution of Mach sources.

   Apache

           The original Apache license was similar to the Berkeley
           license, but source code published under version 2 of the
           Apache license is subject to additional restrictions and
           cannot be included into OpenBSD. In particular, if you use
           code under the Apache 2 license, some of your rights will
           terminate if you claim in court that the code violates a
           patent.

           A license can only be considered fully permissive if it
           allows use by anyone for all the future without giving up
           any of their rights. If there are conditions that might
           terminate any rights in the future, or if you have to give
           up a right that you would otherwise have, even if
           exercising that right could reasonably be regarded as
           morally objectionable, the code is not free.

           In addition, the clause about the patent license is
           problematic because a patent license cannot be granted
           under Copyright law, but only under contract law, which
           drags the whole license into the domain of contract law.
           But while Copyright law is somewhat standardized by
           international agreements, contract law differs wildly
           among jurisdictions. So what the license means in
           different jurisdictions may vary and is hard to predict.

   ISC

           The ISC copyright is functionally equivalent to a two-term
           BSD copyright with language removed that is made
           unnecessary by the Berne convention. This is the preferred
           license for new code incorporated into OpenBSD. A sample
           license is available in the file
           /usr/share/misc/license.template.

   GNU General Public License, GPL, LGPL, copyleft, etc.

           The GNU Public License and licenses modeled on it impose
           the restriction that source code must be distributed or
           made available for all works that are derivatives of the
           GNU copyrighted code.

           While this may superficially look like a noble strategy,
           it is a condition that is typically unacceptable for
           commercial use of software. So in practice, it usually
           ends up hindering free sharing and reuse of code and ideas
           rather than encouraging it. As a consequence, no
           additional software bound by the GPL terms will be
           considered for inclusion into the OpenBSD base system.

           For historical reasons, the OpenBSD base system still
           includes the following GPL-licensed components: the GNU
           compiler collection (GCC) with supporting binutils and
           libraries, GNU CVS, GNU texinfo, the mkhybrid file system
           creation tool, and the readline library. Replacement by
           equivalent, more freely licensed tools is a long-term
           desideratum.

   NetBSD

           Much of OpenBSD is originally based on and evolved from
           NetBSD, since some of the OpenBSD developers were involved
           in the NetBSD project. The general NetBSD license terms
           are compatible with the Berkeley license and permit such
           use. Material subject only to the general NetBSD license
           can generally be included in OpenBSD.

           In the past, NetBSD has included material copyrighted by
           individuals who have imposed license conditions beyond
           that of the general NetBSD license, but granted the NetBSD
           Foundation license to distribute the material. Such
           material can not be included in OpenBSD as long as the
           conditions imposed are at odds with the OpenBSD license
           terms or releases from those terms are offered on a
           discriminatory basis.

   FreeBSD

           Most of FreeBSD is also based on Berkeley licensed
           material or includes copyright notices based on the
           Berkeley model. Such material can be included in OpenBSD,
           while those parts that are subject to GPL or various
           individual copyright terms that are at odds with the
           OpenBSD license can not be included in OpenBSD.

   Linux

           Most of Linux is subject to GPL style licensing terms and
           therefore can not be included in OpenBSD. Individual
           components may be eligible, subject to the terms of the
           originator's copyright notices. Note that Linux
           "distributions" may also be subject to additional
           copyright claims of the distributing organization, either
           as a compilation or on material included that is not part
           of the Linux core.

   X.Org

           The X.Org Foundation maintains and distributes the X
           Window System under a modified MIT license, which is quite
           similar to the BSD license and additionally allows
           sublicensing. Under the name of Xenocara, the OpenBSD base
           system includes an improved and actively maintained
           version of the X.Org code.

   Shareware, Charityware, Freeware, etc.

           Most "shareware" copyright notices impose conditions for
           redistribution, use or visibility that are at conflict
           with the OpenBSD project goals. Review on a case-by-case
           basis is required as to whether the wording of the
           conditions is acceptable in terms of conditions being
           requested vs. demanded and whether the spirit of the
           conditions is compatible with goals of the OpenBSD
           project.

   Public Domain

           While material that is truly entered into the "public
           domain" can be included in OpenBSD, review is required on
           a case by case basis. Frequently the "public domain"
           assertion is made by someone who does not really hold all
           rights under copyright law to grant that status or there
           are a variety of conditions imposed on use. For a work to
           be truly in the "public domain" all rights are abandoned
           and the material is offered without restrictions.

           In some jurisdictions, it is doubtful whether voluntarily
           placing one's own work into the public domain is legally
           possible. For that reason, to make any substantial body of
           code free, it is preferable to state the copyright and put
           it under an ISC or BSD license instead of attempting to
           release it into the public domain.
