5 ms·

There is, alas, plenty of examples of code which were based on BSD-licensed code, and _not_ given back to the community. Exhibit 1: BSD code (open source) and

by tytso 10y ago

There is, alas, plenty of examples of code which were based on BSD-licensed code, and _not_ given back to the community. Exhibit 1: BSD code (open source) and WAFL (netapp's write anywhere file system that was written on top of BSD, and never given back). If the point is so that people contribute the changes back to the original codebase (which you seem to agree with), then the point of using the GPL is to make sure that actually happens. If it is used in a proprietary product, and never given back, from the perspective of the open source world, that use of the code might as well have never happened.

greenhouse_gas 10y ago
Example 2: Cyanogen. Remember how the internet exploded when Cyanogen tried to commercialize CM (and the Focal controversy), and contributers were angry that Cyanogen made a company "off their backs" which sold a closed-source improvement of CM? For some reason, had Samsung done the same, everyone would have praised them to the heavens, it would have been "the obvious success of permissive licencing". Now, when a founder and major contributor did the same to his OS project, everyone cried foul. But Lineage is still Apache2, for some reason.
- Sacho 10y ago
  Erm, weren't the contributors angry because they weren't getting compensation for their GPL-contributed work? > For some reason, had Samsung done the same, everyone would have praised them to the heavens, it would have been "the obvious success of permissive licencing". Do you have an oracle or a time machine to know this?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
charlesdm 10y ago
> If it is used in a proprietary product, and never given back, from the perspective of the open source world, that use of the code might as well have never happened. That's obviously not how it works in the real world. Out of ten people, 5 might give back, and 5 might not. You're essentially saying then that the contribution of the first 5 isn't worth it, because the other 5 wouldn't be contributing. Any contribution is great. The more a library is being used (commercially or non commercially), the more contributors it'll have in the long run. It's not a zero sum game.
- greenhouse_gas 10y ago
  The issue is that permissive licenses make you compete with yourself. Let's say ZFS would be released under a BSD license. Linux would eat it up and improve it. So GPL code is >= BSD (in theory. At this point, Linux can't just use BSD code because of arch differences, but it's true for divers - any BSD driver can be swallowed up by Linux, but not vice versa). But the same is true for BSD -> Proprietary. Any good BSD codebase can be eaten up by, improved, and closed source.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    If you mean the Linux kernel, the GPL patent permissions are stranded and therefore null - since it can't work alone. Therefore it's had a very good run. If you mean Linux as in GNULinux, the whole GNU library was recreated in a more permissive license by Google at immense expense - which is what generally happens with GPL licensed code. By no coincidence, this stranded the patent grants to the kernel - but now it looks like Google is going to go to the trouble of recreating/replacing the Linux kernel as well. Copyleft without a patent grab should be tried - it might actually work. As for GPL, history says nope.
    - flukus 10y ago
      > If you mean Linux as in GNULinux, the whole GNU library was recreated in a more permissive license by Google at immense expense Good, they want android to become a closed source commercial product and that should be expensive. And when that happens everyone will be reminded of why the GPL is a good thing.
X86BSD 10y ago
It's not the point. At least with the BSDL. People who use the BSDL just want people to USE their code. They don't care how. They have no animosity towards private, commercial use of it. NetAPP has supported bsd camps in many ways over the years. Your comment is ignorant. Either way they are not required to. By using BSD code the level of quality of their product is raised. It's in their interest to keep their diff set against head as small as possible. Something a few vendors have learned the hard way. So it makes no sense for them to horde all their changes and code. It just makes their life a lot harder when updating their code base from say FreeBSD.

by tytso 10y ago

greenhouse_gas 10y ago

Example 2: Cyanogen. Remember how the internet exploded when Cyanogen tried to commercialize CM (and the Focal controversy), and contributers were angry that Cyanogen made a company "off their backs" which sold a closed-source improvement of CM? For some reason, had Samsung done the same, everyone would have praised them to the heavens, it would have been "the obvious success of permissive licencing". Now, when a founder and major contributor did the same to his OS project, everyone cried foul. But Lineage is still Apache2, for some reason.

Sacho 10y ago
Erm, weren't the contributors angry because they weren't getting compensation for their GPL-contributed work? > For some reason, had Samsung done the same, everyone would have praised them to the heavens, it would have been "the obvious success of permissive licencing". Do you have an oracle or a time machine to know this?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

charlesdm 10y ago

> If it is used in a proprietary product, and never given back, from the perspective of the open source world, that use of the code might as well have never happened. That's obviously not how it works in the real world. Out of ten people, 5 might give back, and 5 might not. You're essentially saying then that the contribution of the first 5 isn't worth it, because the other 5 wouldn't be contributing. Any contribution is great. The more a library is being used (commercially or non commercially), the more contributors it'll have in the long run. It's not a zero sum game.

greenhouse_gas 10y ago
The issue is that permissive licenses make you compete with yourself. Let's say ZFS would be released under a BSD license. Linux would eat it up and improve it. So GPL code is >= BSD (in theory. At this point, Linux can't just use BSD code because of arch differences, but it's true for divers - any BSD driver can be swallowed up by Linux, but not vice versa). But the same is true for BSD -> Proprietary. Any good BSD codebase can be eaten up by, improved, and closed source.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  If you mean the Linux kernel, the GPL patent permissions are stranded and therefore null - since it can't work alone. Therefore it's had a very good run. If you mean Linux as in GNULinux, the whole GNU library was recreated in a more permissive license by Google at immense expense - which is what generally happens with GPL licensed code. By no coincidence, this stranded the patent grants to the kernel - but now it looks like Google is going to go to the trouble of recreating/replacing the Linux kernel as well. Copyleft without a patent grab should be tried - it might actually work. As for GPL, history says nope.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > If you mean Linux as in GNULinux, the whole GNU library was recreated in a more permissive license by Google at immense expense Good, they want android to become a closed source commercial product and that should be expensive. And when that happens everyone will be reminded of why the GPL is a good thing.

X86BSD 10y ago

It's not the point. At least with the BSDL. People who use the BSDL just want people to USE their code. They don't care how. They have no animosity towards private, commercial use of it. NetAPP has supported bsd camps in many ways over the years. Your comment is ignorant. Either way they are not required to. By using BSD code the level of quality of their product is raised. It's in their interest to keep their diff set against head as small as possible. Something a few vendors have learned the hard way. So it makes no sense for them to horde all their changes and code. It just makes their life a lot harder when updating their code base from say FreeBSD.