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>On the contrary. In reality BSD style licenses _enable_ companies to give something back to a project, whereas they would not be able with a GPL license. All

>On the contrary. In reality BSD style licenses _enable_ companies to give something back to a project, whereas they would not be able with a GPL license. All it takes is to list projects like Linux and GCC to show that yes, companies can give something back just fine with GPL. What you are referring to are companies who wants to use open source in proprietary software, and yes for them GPL is not an option unless they can make a deal with the owners of said GPL licenced software for dual licencing. Then again GPL is created on the premise that all recipients shall have access to the source code so obviously it won't work with proprietary software which typically relies on keeping the source code hidden while charging for binaries. >That's one of the reasons developers chose BSD/MIT/LGPL over GPL. Because they _specifically_ want people and companies to be able to have that option. And one of the reasons developers chose GPL over BSD/MIT is that they want to recieve ANY enhancements made to their code. There's no right or wrong here, developers will make the decision for THEIR code. So typically an open source developer will choose between: do I want to allow people/companies to take the code I offer and return nothing/only what they want of any changes they make (BSD/MIT-style) or do I want them to have to return any changes made to the specific code I share (LGPL,MPL-style) or do I want them to open source any code with witch they link my code (GPL) Looking at how these licences are employed in 'real-life' it's my impression that GPL is often used for larger, full solutions/applications, while BSD/MIT/LGPL/MPL etc are dominant in component/framework style code. Again I'm not taking any sides when it comes to licencing, I also have no problem with proprietary code (unless it tries to lock-in my data by only offering a proprietary format which is a no-no for me).

pretoriusB 14y ago
>All it takes is to list projects like Linux and GCC to show that yes, companies can give something back just fine with GPL. That only works for server software, like Linux, and basic infrastructure that tons of companies use, like GCC, etc. And it works because they don't have to distribute said software. On the server side, it doesn't make any difference if the license is BSD or GPL. In both cases, companies get to make whatever changes they want, deploy at their infrastructure, and NOT release the code (because they're not re-distributing it). Plus, in a lot of cases, they use Linux as a commodity underlying layer, so they don't care about making proprietary changes at all.

pretoriusB 14y ago

>All it takes is to list projects like Linux and GCC to show that yes, companies can give something back just fine with GPL. That only works for server software, like Linux, and basic infrastructure that tons of companies use, like GCC, etc. And it works because they don't have to distribute said software. On the server side, it doesn't make any difference if the license is BSD or GPL. In both cases, companies get to make whatever changes they want, deploy at their infrastructure, and NOT release the code (because they're not re-distributing it). Plus, in a lot of cases, they use Linux as a commodity underlying layer, so they don't care about making proprietary changes at all.