There's no reason...except you have to relicense your entire project. In the same vein, there's no reason the Linux kernel can't mainline ZFS, they just have to

There's no reason...except you have to relicense your entire project. In the same vein, there's no reason the Linux kernel can't mainline ZFS, they just have to relicense the kernel to CDDL. If the software's good enough for them to use it, the software's good enough for them to make compromises in terms of licenses. Second, the CDDL originated with Sun. Oracle wasn't even anywhere near Sun when the CDDL was being written, and the CDDL is not even Oracle's favored free software license. Look at the free software they steward -- Java, Mysql, and Berkeley DB. All of which is either GPL or AGPL with contributor agreements, so they can continue to profit on closed source versions that the community doesn't get. Compare that to Postgres, which is BSD licensed, and doesn't have one monolith that can do anything they want because they have a legal advantage. Yes, you can only write more firmware code with the FAT driver, but as we've seen from the track record of Clang, the BSDs, Postgres, and other liberally licensed software, what really matters in getting changes open isn't the license, but rather the pace of development. Develop fast enough, and people will contribute back, both because it's the right thing to do and because it's a lot of work having to make huge patches every upstream release. Compare that to the situation with GPL-encumbered software like MySQL, where there are still rather key pieces of the stack that can and are held back because it's not in Oracle's best interest to give them to the community. So yes, BSD gives more freedom to everyone. A few bad actors may make a short-sighted decision not to contribute back, but in the end, more people will do good than do bad.