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*BSD is dying! You don’t have to be Kreshkin… But seriously, if one counts macOS and iOS as FreeBSD users, there are more than ever. Of course that means count

• bigfishrunning 3mo ago
  FreeBSD's license means it shows up in a lot of unexpected places -- the last two Sony Playstations run a FreeBSD derived OS for instance. It's around, more then you think, but it's very quiet...
  • throw0101d 3mo ago
    * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_FreeBSD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Free...
  • rbanffy 3mo ago
    One of the reasons it’s very quiet is that you can only do what the company that provided it to you allows you to do with it. You can’t reinstall a fork of PlayStation OS, for instance. Sony won’t provide you the sources and the changes they made. If it was a GPLv3 OS, they would provide everything you need to build your own PlayStation OS.
    • bigfishrunning 3mo ago
      If it were a GPLv3 OS, it's likely that they would have chosen something else.
      • JackSlateur 3mo ago
        Would that have been a bad thing ? Between a proprietary OS on which we cannot do anything and an opensource-based OS on which we cannot do anything .. I'd argue that making the company paying the bill would be more healthy
        • bigfishrunning 3mo ago
          The two arguments against that 1) People writing BSD licensed software want people to use it, and don't really care about any reciprocal contribution (or else they would write copyleft-licensed software) 2) "the company" never pays the bill. It is always passed to their customers in one way or another.
          • rbanffy 3mo ago
            > don't really care about any reciprocal contribution (or else they would write copyleft-licensed software) Also don’t care about their users having the same rights they enjoyed getting software written by someone else (for free!) and making some changes before their customers could pay to use it.
            • bigfishrunning 3mo ago
              Yes! if they did care about that, they'd use some copy-left license.
          • JackSlateur 3mo ago
            Yes If we think a bit more, that may help the customers: companies like Sony would have to choice between either implement their own OS (increased cost, increase end product prices) or use opensource software The topic would become a competitive (dis)advantage, not just a random topic for legal people My take is that BSD-like licences are bad for humankind, but as a short-sighted person with no impact whatsover, it does not matter