Permissive Free Software Licence - Other Terms

Other Terms

Copycenter is a term originally used to explain the modified BSD licence, a permissive free software licence. The term was presented by Kirk McKusick, a computer scientist famous for his work on BSD, during one of his speeches at BSDCon 1999. It is a word play on copyright, copyleft and copy center.

The way it was characterized politically, you had copyright, which is what the big companies use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free software's way of making sure they can't lock it up; and then Berkeley had what we called ‘copycenter’, which is ‘take it down to the copy center and make as many copies as you want.’ —Kirk McKusick, BSDCon 1999

The liberty to 'make as many copies as you want' is in fact also provided by all copyleft licences. However, unlike both copyleft licences and copyright law, permissive free software licences do not control the licence terms that a derivative work falls under. Nevertheless, the quote describes the permissive licence users' unconcern for the discussion on protection of freedoms.

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