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That's kind of the point though. BSD is truly free, and that means there are a lot of proprietary products which benefit massively from it and create worthwhile

That's kind of the point though. BSD is truly free, and that means there are a lot of proprietary products which benefit massively from it and create worthwhile products with clear monetization strategies and thrive. Sure, they might not contribute back, but the point of the open source was often to share code to improve the state of the art and provide useful code for people so they don't have to start from scratch. Apple took BSD licensed code to make macOS, and it helped them, they contribute some OS code to Darwin, but there are probably lots of happy mac users who benefit immensely from that BSD code. There are lots of people who do BSD code and improve it, just as there are GPL people. Popularity is not always [i.e. almost never] a measure of correctness, principle, or goodness. I like BSD, because any code I release, I hope it helps someone somewhere to do something useful for the world [even when proprietary], and if it does, then great.

nbsd4life 8y ago
Apple isn't the best example. They generally do publish the modified source code to FOSS projects they do, and sometimes they don't add their own license clause, so the changes can get merged back.
- trasz 8y ago
  It is a good example, because that’s exactly how the BSD license works - it doesn’t force you to give your changes back, but there are other incentives to do so, such as not having to maintain your diffs forever.
lmm 8y ago
"Truly free" is in the eye of the beholder: is a country with laws against slavery more or less free than one without them? I release my code as open-source because I don't want my end users to ever end up unable to fix bugs in the code they're using. I don't want my code used in something like macOS where users are stuck using what they're given; it might help those users in the short term, but I believe it leaves them worse off in the long term.
AsyncAwait 8y ago
Yes, this is the sense of "truly free" that leads to people in the U.S. being able to marry children, not having healthcare taken care of etc. That's a true 'freedom' to go bankrupt, but am not sure that's a 'freedom' many actually want.
brobdingnagians 8y ago
I think most of the commenters on my post misunderstood me very much. I think people should be free to license under GPL, AGPL, SSPL, VXMPL, or whatever the heck they want. I like BSD personally, and it meets my requirements, but someone who has a different need can do what they want. I think GPL has worked well for Linux, and I'm glad they did it the way they did; I think it is less free than BSD, but in a good way for their project and purposes. I think having both a GPL licensed OS and a BSD licensed OS is great. We have diversity of licenses for different purposes and different ideologies, and it enriches the market in a lot of ways. I think forcing everyone to use the same copyleft licenses for everything based on a radical ideology is a dangerous and useless endeavour; and that sort of ideology is completely _not_ free in every sense of the word. Do what you want, set your rules for your project as you wish, we are all better for it.
- dhuramas 8y ago
  I guess it all comes down to whether one thinks free as in beer is "freer" than free as in freedom. Freedom has a price.
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  I don't think you were misunderstood. But, I think the way you think of freedom is that one has an absolute freedom do do whatever, including infringing on other freedoms whereas others disagree. By analogy; if one is free to rob someone, they're more free in absolute terms than they're free if they can't do that, but then the person who is about to get robbed isn't free to feel secure. So in other words, the robber is more free, but at the expense of the robbed. In that sense, the BSD license is more absolutely/selfishly free for the individual, whereas the GPL is more freedom-perusing for the entire community.
eadmund 8y ago
> the point of the open source was often to share code to improve the state of the art and provide useful code for people so they don't have to start from scratch Was that the point of free software? I thought that the point was freedom: that users be permitted to use, modify & redistribute the software they use. Inclusion of BSD-licensed code in proprietary software fails at that: a macOS user is unable to use macOS without paying for it; unable to legally modify it; and even if he did modify unable to legally distribute those modifications. BSD-licensed code is awesome for vendors of proprietary software who want a head start; it's not so great for users.
- imtringued 8y ago
  You're forgetting that those businesses that depend on your software are your users. The first step of making useful software is by having users. If nobody uses your software because of licensing reasons nobody will ever contribute to it and it might as well not exist. On the other hand if there are users then there is a chance that a subset of the users will contribute back voluntarily.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Trying to do business with desktop software proves otherwise regarding contributions.

nbsd4life 8y ago

Apple isn't the best example. They generally do publish the modified source code to FOSS projects they do, and sometimes they don't add their own license clause, so the changes can get merged back.

trasz 8y ago
It is a good example, because that’s exactly how the BSD license works - it doesn’t force you to give your changes back, but there are other incentives to do so, such as not having to maintain your diffs forever.

lmm 8y ago

"Truly free" is in the eye of the beholder: is a country with laws against slavery more or less free than one without them? I release my code as open-source because I don't want my end users to ever end up unable to fix bugs in the code they're using. I don't want my code used in something like macOS where users are stuck using what they're given; it might help those users in the short term, but I believe it leaves them worse off in the long term.

AsyncAwait 8y ago

Yes, this is the sense of "truly free" that leads to people in the U.S. being able to marry children, not having healthcare taken care of etc. That's a true 'freedom' to go bankrupt, but am not sure that's a 'freedom' many actually want.

brobdingnagians 8y ago

I think most of the commenters on my post misunderstood me very much. I think people should be free to license under GPL, AGPL, SSPL, VXMPL, or whatever the heck they want. I like BSD personally, and it meets my requirements, but someone who has a different need can do what they want. I think GPL has worked well for Linux, and I'm glad they did it the way they did; I think it is less free than BSD, but in a good way for their project and purposes. I think having both a GPL licensed OS and a BSD licensed OS is great. We have diversity of licenses for different purposes and different ideologies, and it enriches the market in a lot of ways. I think forcing everyone to use the same copyleft licenses for everything based on a radical ideology is a dangerous and useless endeavour; and that sort of ideology is completely _not_ free in every sense of the word. Do what you want, set your rules for your project as you wish, we are all better for it.

dhuramas 8y ago
I guess it all comes down to whether one thinks free as in beer is "freer" than free as in freedom. Freedom has a price.
AsyncAwait 8y ago
I don't think you were misunderstood. But, I think the way you think of freedom is that one has an absolute freedom do do whatever, including infringing on other freedoms whereas others disagree. By analogy; if one is free to rob someone, they're more free in absolute terms than they're free if they can't do that, but then the person who is about to get robbed isn't free to feel secure. So in other words, the robber is more free, but at the expense of the robbed. In that sense, the BSD license is more absolutely/selfishly free for the individual, whereas the GPL is more freedom-perusing for the entire community.

eadmund 8y ago

> the point of the open source was often to share code to improve the state of the art and provide useful code for people so they don't have to start from scratch Was that the point of free software? I thought that the point was freedom: that users be permitted to use, modify & redistribute the software they use. Inclusion of BSD-licensed code in proprietary software fails at that: a macOS user is unable to use macOS without paying for it; unable to legally modify it; and even if he did modify unable to legally distribute those modifications. BSD-licensed code is awesome for vendors of proprietary software who want a head start; it's not so great for users.

imtringued 8y ago
You're forgetting that those businesses that depend on your software are your users. The first step of making useful software is by having users. If nobody uses your software because of licensing reasons nobody will ever contribute to it and it might as well not exist. On the other hand if there are users then there is a chance that a subset of the users will contribute back voluntarily.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Trying to do business with desktop software proves otherwise regarding contributions.