5 ms·

What I know is if projects use permissive licenses, the software end users getting is usually proprietary. Copyleft is designed to prevent that from happening.

• torstenvl 5y ago
  It doesn't matter if some other project is proprietary. The proprietary company's proprietary product was always going to be proprietary. What matters is whether they contribute back anything to open source. And it's a hell of a lot easier to get Legal to sign off on contributing back bug fixes and enhancements on a piecemeal basis rather than adding a recurring obligation to the books.
  • karatinversion 5y ago
    > The proprietary company's proprietary product was always going to be proprietary. A lot is companies would have preferred to have proprietary operating systems, but the Linux license prevents them.
    • zaarn 5y ago
      Plenty of companies aren't hindered by the Linux license as they are not required to give you the source most of the time, they just point you to their SoC vendor. Or worse, they just don't use Linux and use BSD or Windows Embedded instead. I don't see this as a valid point.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    > The proprietary company's proprietary product was always going to be proprietary. The point of copyleft is to make this not true. Most companies don't have the resources to reimplement Linux from scratch, so they won't be allowed to make their drivers/kernel modifications proprietary.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • torstenvl 5y ago
      I know that's the theory, but I don't see that happening in practice. See, e.g., TiVo, Android, NVIDIA drivers...