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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

Well, I'm going to bring up the angle that has been debated to death all over the net: given the choice, I prefer software with a copyleft free software license. I have nothing against the BSDs and would happily use them if the opportunity arose.

But I fear that if Linux did not have a GPL license, it would never have reached the level of popularity and the driver and feature set it has today. Sure there are thousands of people and companies violating the terms of the license, but enough comply to promote the system.

Apple and Sony, among others, use the BSD code and give almost nothing back by comparison.

Free software 'copyleft' licenses like GPL, EPL, MPL are free-as-in-freedom, free software permissive licenses like MIT, BSD, Apache are free-as-in-labor.

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dieselriot OP wrote

I don't think that's a flaw in the BSD license itself, or that this was the original intent. The corporations you mentioned will keep doing it as long as there are people dumb enough to support them.

Windows using BSD code is a great example of this. People have the choice between using the crappy proprietary system, BSD, Linux or whatever else.

If it weren't for the BSD license, Windows would probably be a bit crappier, and people would still use it regardless because games and commodity are more important than good code and a stable system.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

Maybe the original creators and users of the BSD license didn't have that intent. But even ten years ago if you adopted a permissive license for a project you had to know the likely outcome.

So I don't think it was short-sighted to use it even fifteen years ago. But today?

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