4 ms·

What Open Source achieved is that we can now build businesses and consimer products quickly by sharing innovation with few strings attached. Free software has

What Open Source achieved is that we can now build businesses and consimer products quickly by sharing innovation with few strings attached. Free software has limited overlap with that particular benefit of Open Source. At this point in time I think of the two things as widely different so the question does not even come up what's the better term.

Nomentatus 10y ago
True so long as you aren't including GPL2 or GPL3 as open source - hellualot of strings there for anyone with a hardware or software patent, which is why so many billions have been spent replacing those licenses with more liberal (MIT, BSD) ones across so much software.
- snakeanus 10y ago
  Patents are cancer. Also, GPLv2 does not say anything about patents.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    Google implicit patent grant. Turns out it does. Just doesn't use the word. Re patents, how would you have James Watt raise money for his steam engine? It took long enough with the patent he got.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  So how well are *BSD doing in the market in regards to GNU/Linux? When the only thing standing will be the Linux kernel, don't be surprised by the amount of "freedom" you will get.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    The rights granted to the Linux kernel are "stranded" - the kernel can't do anything by itself so licensing to only it doesn't matter, so Google paid to redo the GNU libraries under a BSD license to strand the kernel rights. Even so, with Fuschia Google is replacing the Linux kernel, too, with its own BSD (or MIT) licensed kernel. So, BSD is actually taking the whole field, particularly measured by sales.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      The license yes, but not the BSD operating systems variants. How much do you think companies will bother to give back once they alienated GPL software, given the actual contributions? Nothing of relevance I tell you, just enough to keep the masses happy, AOSP style. I won't care, as I said I mostly use commercial software anyway, but it will feel good to say "I told you so".
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > How much do you think companies will bother to give back once they alienated GPL software, given the actual contributions? Plenty of permissively-licensed software projects have strong contributions from commercial users.
        pjmlp 10y ago
        Such as? The AOSP, BSD and LLVM ones surely aren't such projects. AOSP doesn't get any of the Google Services stack nor OEMs changes. The BSD hardly get any updates from all those routers and embedded devices using them, to the point they were forced to beg for donnations last year. clang is being adopted by embedded vendors that had to contribute their changes back to GCC and now don't need to keep doing it.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Such as? SQLite and Postgres are the main examples I think of for this. > The AOSP, BSD and LLVM ones surely aren't such projects. AOSP is almost entirely ongoing contribution by the primary commercial user, so it would probably fit the description, though I was thinking of—without having stated—specifically third-party commercial users, so it wasn't what I had in mind. > clang is being adopted by embedded vendors that had to contribute their changes back to GCC and now don't need to keep doing it. Clang has a lot of corporate contributors, including all of the big three tech companies. Not sure if any of the big contributors have closed downstream derivatives or if they are just open-source users contributing back. Sure, copyleft prevents downstream use that doesn't contribute back, but it doesn't necessarily maximize contributions back.

Nomentatus 10y ago

True so long as you aren't including GPL2 or GPL3 as open source - hellualot of strings there for anyone with a hardware or software patent, which is why so many billions have been spent replacing those licenses with more liberal (MIT, BSD) ones across so much software.

snakeanus 10y ago
Patents are cancer. Also, GPLv2 does not say anything about patents.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  Google implicit patent grant. Turns out it does. Just doesn't use the word. Re patents, how would you have James Watt raise money for his steam engine? It took long enough with the patent he got.
pjmlp 10y ago
So how well are *BSD doing in the market in regards to GNU/Linux? When the only thing standing will be the Linux kernel, don't be surprised by the amount of "freedom" you will get.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  The rights granted to the Linux kernel are "stranded" - the kernel can't do anything by itself so licensing to only it doesn't matter, so Google paid to redo the GNU libraries under a BSD license to strand the kernel rights. Even so, with Fuschia Google is replacing the Linux kernel, too, with its own BSD (or MIT) licensed kernel. So, BSD is actually taking the whole field, particularly measured by sales.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    The license yes, but not the BSD operating systems variants. How much do you think companies will bother to give back once they alienated GPL software, given the actual contributions? Nothing of relevance I tell you, just enough to keep the masses happy, AOSP style. I won't care, as I said I mostly use commercial software anyway, but it will feel good to say "I told you so".
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > How much do you think companies will bother to give back once they alienated GPL software, given the actual contributions? Plenty of permissively-licensed software projects have strong contributions from commercial users.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Such as? The AOSP, BSD and LLVM ones surely aren't such projects. AOSP doesn't get any of the Google Services stack nor OEMs changes. The BSD hardly get any updates from all those routers and embedded devices using them, to the point they were forced to beg for donnations last year. clang is being adopted by embedded vendors that had to contribute their changes back to GCC and now don't need to keep doing it.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Such as? SQLite and Postgres are the main examples I think of for this. > The AOSP, BSD and LLVM ones surely aren't such projects. AOSP is almost entirely ongoing contribution by the primary commercial user, so it would probably fit the description, though I was thinking of—without having stated—specifically third-party commercial users, so it wasn't what I had in mind. > clang is being adopted by embedded vendors that had to contribute their changes back to GCC and now don't need to keep doing it. Clang has a lot of corporate contributors, including all of the big three tech companies. Not sure if any of the big contributors have closed downstream derivatives or if they are just open-source users contributing back. Sure, copyleft prevents downstream use that doesn't contribute back, but it doesn't necessarily maximize contributions back.