Linux would not have been successful were it not for the licensing. Copyleft licenses are appealing to a lot of developers. People who are willing to donate lot

Linux would not have been successful were it not for the licensing. Copyleft licenses are appealing to a lot of developers. People who are willing to donate lots of time writing free software don't want to feel they're being taken advantage of. Programmers are the life-blood of an open source project, I think developer preference is a huge factor. A BSD might have caught on in the same way eventually but it would have taken longer.