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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

because the code is BSD-licensed and it REALLY doesn't matter

But now you can never change the license again, even if an error of wording is discovered in the BSD license. You are stuck forever.

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Yes, stuck forever, because there is absolutely no way I could pick up a telephone and have a pleasant conversation with the person responsible for making that decision. He lives in a cold granite tower guarded by dragons and evil wizards. And snakes. Thousands of poisonous snakes.

You might be able to do this for now, but you won't be able to when Oracle buys Google.

Yes, when Oracle buys Google the absolutely bog-standard BSD license text accompanying this open source project will spontaneously transmute into a mystical poem written in ancient Aramaic. This poem, when read backwards, will summon the demon Yog-Sothoth from the depths of Larry Ellison's underpants to remove my right to use the code however I wish provided I retain the copyright message and license text somewhere in the accompanying documentary materials.

Oh wait: no it won't.

No, they'll just claim the software is patented, and that the BSD license doesn't grant anyone a right to use the software.

(Hey, I wish we could live in a world where we could all write software and not worry about copyrights and patents. But that, sadly, is not the world we live in.)

They can do that already now.

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