[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: Let's do it completely different!

[John W Baxter]

At 11:40 -0400 10/25/2002, Schollnick, Benjamin wrote:
>At 15:04 -0700 10/23/2002, William Dozier wrote:
>> >On Wednesday, Oct 23, 2002, at 03:26PM, kevin parks <kp87@lycos.com>
>wrote:
>> >>Beside the terminal is a pretty cool app and *ever* mac will already
>> >>have one!
>> >
>> >Or not. Isn't the "BSD layer" install optional?
>
>> > As has been explained to me (perhaps accurately), the BSD layer is
>optional
>> for licensing reasons.  Lots of things fail if it is not installed (many
>> installers, including from Apple, etc).  So it's not really optional.
>
>Could you elaborate on this?  I'm just extremely curious at why the
>BSD layer being "optional" would affect licensing?

As someone who has never read the Berkeley license, sorry, no, I can't.

If there is any truth (I've already disclaimed ;-)), it would be that
making the BSD subsystem an automatically installed part of Mac OS X
(instead of an optional part which does get installed) might imply a
requirement to open more source code than Apple wants to.

Or it might be something else entirely, or the whole license explanation
may be wrong, or Apple Legal may be being overly careful.

  --John
-- 
John Baxter   jwblist@olympus.net      Port Ludlow, WA, USA