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Because Linux has a stronger ecosystem for many tasks, and the kind of people that don't want to put forth any effort to comply with the license is highly corre
by SwellJoe 11y ago
Because Linux has a stronger ecosystem for many tasks, and the kind of people that don't want to put forth any effort to comply with the license is highly correlated with being the kind of person who doesn't want to work on anything hard. If Linux has the radio driver already and BSD doesn't, the decision is already made, from their perspective.
There are other factors, sure, and if I were a company that didn't want to comply with the GPL, I'd certainly be using BSD code instead. But, if the "free money" at the bank next door requires them to work, they aren't doing it. They seem to reckon that stealing GPL code is the path of least resistance. Which, I guess, is why enforcement of the GPL is so important; without making it cost something to violate the GPL, there's no motivation for companies to be good citizens in the Free software community. It also seems like enforcement of the GPL is good for BSD (or, at least, good for BSD adoption, if not for contribution, since these are folks who don't want to expend even a tiny amount of effort/money to contribute back, which is why there's a violation in the first place), since the effort/cost for making BSD-licensed stuff work for these companies doesn't change as the cost of making GPL work goes up.