3 ms·

I think his technical contributions are much more relevant here than the dogma, which, as I said, seems to be scaring people away to this day.

• zanny 8y ago
  There is ample evidence that in the absence of substantial GPL contributions (Linux kernel, KHTML, GCC, etc) there would be a much reduced substantive body of influential free code available. Apple in 1998 definitely weighed their options between writing their own proprietary browser engine vs forking a GPL one. To this day almost all free software hardware device support is exclusively due to how second class proprietary drivers play in the Linux driver ecosystem. Before the prevalence of GCC compilers were one of the deepest and most tightly protected proprietary secrets of corporations. And none of that would have happened with permissive licenses because it required compulsory source disclosure to force businesses to contribute back. The alternative is what we see Sony do with their Playstation OSes - they built the PS3 and PS4 OS off FreeBSD, but neither contribute code back to said projects, provide any sponsorship or support (dozens of companies do, but the one making grotesque profits by exploiting user freedom isn't), and use an open source product to cripple fully functional computers with unmodifiable proprietary operating systems. We would absolutely be in the PS4 world in regards to almost all software if the free software movement didn't push its dogma in the 90s.