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Arguably that happened because Linux was, in fact, the most generous option: the BSDs effectively refused to get contributors beyond their very small groups, an
by toyg 12d ago
Arguably that happened because Linux was, in fact, the most generous option: the BSDs effectively refused to get contributors beyond their very small groups, and refused to incorporate patches to support "bad" hardware or nonfree blobs - meanwhile, Linux was built around modules that could contain anything regardless of license, and happily accepted new patches and unknown maintainers. You still see it today: Linux literally built its own distributed VCS (git), while some BSDs are still on the hyper-centralized CVS.
If there isn't an even more generous option is simply because building a mainstream OS is incredibly hard.
- jefftk 12d agoHow open a platform is to external contributors is a very different axis than the legal permissiveness one the article describes.
- toyg 12d agoIt's the same axis: business-friendliness. The legal permissiveness described is critical for most software because it enables business adoption. But for a kernel, which sits at the intersection of hardware and software, "free as in beer" is not enough, there is another critical factor: how easy it is to make it work with proprietary hardware. A free kernel that won't work with my custom chip and whose maintainers won't accept the necessary patches to fix this state of things, is just useless to my business.