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> People like to shit on GPL, yet Linux and GCC would never had happened if it wasn't for it. Why wouldn't it? FreeBSD seems alive and well, and its doing qui

> People like to shit on GPL, yet Linux and GCC would never had happened if it wasn't for it. Why wouldn't it? FreeBSD seems alive and well, and its doing quite well for itself despite not having as many upstream corporate contributions. And why should freebsd care if Apple, Sony and Microsoft repurpose their software? If something I wrote ended up in macos and the PS5 I'd think that was pretty cool.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
You'd think it was pretty cool, sure, we all would... but imagine you lose your job, the job market sucks, etc. you're on your 8th month of unemployment and having a hard time making mortgage payments and you see a company like Sony shipping something based on your own open source stuff... but without contributing back, without attribution, and without compensation? Real world scenarios like this is what led people to embrace the GPL. When times are good, corporate use of open source trickles down to the community in the form of patronage and employment. It is not always the case that this happens during "bad times."
- tzs 3y ago
  >> If something I wrote ended up in macos and the PS5 I'd think that was pretty cool. > You'd think it was pretty cool, sure, we all would... but imagine you lose your job, the job market sucks, etc. you're on your 8th month of unemployment and having a hard time making mortgage payments and you see a company like Sony shipping something based on your own open source stuff... but without contributing back, without attribution, and without compensation? ...whereas if you had used GPL you would still be unemployed in a lousy job market on your 8th month of unemployment and having a hard time making mortgage payments, but would have some Sony source code to look at and use.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    But I'd have sweet sweet moral vindication ;-)
    - josephg 3y ago
      Nah. Sony would probably just write their own code, or build their software on top of something BSD/MIT licensed. You'd still be unemployed, just you also wouldn't be able to write "My code is in the PS5" on your resume.
mardifoufs 3y ago
Ok, it would be alive. But I'm not sure you can compare Linux and freebsd and not see a difference in "liveliness". I don't think Linux is technically superior to freebsd, or at least wasn't for most of its life, yet Linux still gets orders of magnitude more usage/contributions/drivers etc. So it must be something else, and I think the license is a pretty good factor in this case.
- josephg 3y ago
  I suspect it’s just momentum. Just like how game developers target windows. Success breeds success.
pjdesno 3y ago
GCC was originally written by Stallman, and greatly improved through the late 80s and early 90s, in part IIRC by a number of hardware vendors who thought it was a better way to get a high quality compiler than paying Whitesmiths, MetaWare etc. BSD could have become fully free with the portable C compiler (pcc) but in the early 90s it only supported the VAX and Tahoe (CCI Power 6/32) architectures, and I don't think would have been a good foundation for a modern compiler. Various folks had hacked versions of pcc in the 80s to support other architectures, but the code didn't go back upstream. Without GCC, there's a good chance that the entire FOSS ecosystem wouldn't exist.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Also, GCC was largely ignored until Sun broke the UNIX delivery model, splitting Solaris into user, and developer tooling paid separately, quickly followed by other UNIX vendors.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

You'd think it was pretty cool, sure, we all would... but imagine you lose your job, the job market sucks, etc. you're on your 8th month of unemployment and having a hard time making mortgage payments and you see a company like Sony shipping something based on your own open source stuff... but without contributing back, without attribution, and without compensation? Real world scenarios like this is what led people to embrace the GPL. When times are good, corporate use of open source trickles down to the community in the form of patronage and employment. It is not always the case that this happens during "bad times."

tzs 3y ago
>> If something I wrote ended up in macos and the PS5 I'd think that was pretty cool. > You'd think it was pretty cool, sure, we all would... but imagine you lose your job, the job market sucks, etc. you're on your 8th month of unemployment and having a hard time making mortgage payments and you see a company like Sony shipping something based on your own open source stuff... but without contributing back, without attribution, and without compensation? ...whereas if you had used GPL you would still be unemployed in a lousy job market on your 8th month of unemployment and having a hard time making mortgage payments, but would have some Sony source code to look at and use.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  But I'd have sweet sweet moral vindication ;-)
  - josephg 3y ago
    Nah. Sony would probably just write their own code, or build their software on top of something BSD/MIT licensed. You'd still be unemployed, just you also wouldn't be able to write "My code is in the PS5" on your resume.

mardifoufs 3y ago

Ok, it would be alive. But I'm not sure you can compare Linux and freebsd and not see a difference in "liveliness". I don't think Linux is technically superior to freebsd, or at least wasn't for most of its life, yet Linux still gets orders of magnitude more usage/contributions/drivers etc. So it must be something else, and I think the license is a pretty good factor in this case.

josephg 3y ago
I suspect it’s just momentum. Just like how game developers target windows. Success breeds success.

pjdesno 3y ago

GCC was originally written by Stallman, and greatly improved through the late 80s and early 90s, in part IIRC by a number of hardware vendors who thought it was a better way to get a high quality compiler than paying Whitesmiths, MetaWare etc. BSD could have become fully free with the portable C compiler (pcc) but in the early 90s it only supported the VAX and Tahoe (CCI Power 6/32) architectures, and I don't think would have been a good foundation for a modern compiler. Various folks had hacked versions of pcc in the 80s to support other architectures, but the code didn't go back upstream. Without GCC, there's a good chance that the entire FOSS ecosystem wouldn't exist.

pjmlp 3y ago
Also, GCC was largely ignored until Sun broke the UNIX delivery model, splitting Solaris into user, and developer tooling paid separately, quickly followed by other UNIX vendors.