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First mover advantage applies to open source mindshare, too. MySQL was faster and supported by PHP. MySQL stopped being faster in a relatively short time, by t

First mover advantage applies to open source mindshare, too. MySQL was faster and supported by PHP. MySQL stopped being faster in a relatively short time, by then MySQL already had the mind-share (and thus resource) advantage. Exact same situation as Linux vs. BSD -- an early boost (in that case, the AT&T lawsuit) led to a long-term lead, regardless of whether that lead was otherwise warranted.

rbanffy 17y ago
The lead of Linux over BSD has more relation to the GPL and how it is business-safe (as in it's safer to donate source to a GPL project than to a BSD one) than the AT&T lawsuit. If company A donates software S to GPL project G, company B cannot take it and incorporate into its product P unless it's GPL and, thus, usable by A. The same safeguard does not apply to BSD projects, hence, you see companies contributing more to Linux than to BSD.
- antonovka 17y ago
  The lead of Linux over BSD has more relation to the GPL and how it is business-safe (as in it's safer to donate source to a GPL project than to a BSD one) than the AT&T lawsuit. If it wasn't for the fact that, feature for feature, FreeBSD is generally on-par (or ahead of) Linux, that argument would hold more weight. In fact, for a non-service organization, it's safer to donate your source code to a BSD project because you don't have to donate all of it. See, for instance, Juniper Networks -- one of Cisco's larger competitors, they rely on FreeBSD to power their routing/switching products, and they employee a number of FreeBSD developers in the process. Quite a lot of BSD development is commercially funded, primarily by companies that rely on the code for their own products. Linux, however, sees considerable contributions from companies that rely on Linux for their service offerings (such as IBM) -- Linux has the mindshare advantage, and as such, a service company needs to support it.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    "FreeBSD is generally on-par (or ahead of) Linux" They are both fairly mature implementations of Unix. It is expected they shown little difference in feature set. "it's safer to donate your source code to a BSD project because you don't have to donate all of it." Why would you have to donate all of it? I can donate parts of a program to any project I want. What I shouldn't do in this case is to assign copyright to the project maintainer. Linux kernel developers don't have to assign copyright to the Linux Foundation. The case for Juniper is that they can simply adopt an OS, customize it as much as they want and give back to the developers that gave this to them whatever the developers they paid wrote that is not part of their secret sauce. I think for IBM the case is to make it easier to sell xSeries and zSeries servers if they run Linux better. As for the p's, I think they prefer to sell them with AIX. I don't think their service organization benefits much from their involvement.
    - antonovka 17y ago
      They are both fairly mature implementations of Unix. It is expected they shown little difference in feature set. In that case, how has the GPL and Linux's "business friendly" license made a difference? Why would you have to donate all of it? I can donate parts of a program to any project I want. The GPL. The usual "if you don't distribute it, you don't have to GPL it" argument is disingenuous given that all but a few real-world use cases require distribution. The case for Juniper is that they can simply adopt an OS, customize it as much as they want and give back to the developers that gave this to them whatever the developers they paid wrote that is not part of their secret sauce. Yes, and this is the case for many other businesses that rely on software -- not services -- to cover their bottom line. I think for IBM the case is to make it easier to sell xSeries and zSeries servers if they run Linux better. As for the p's, I think they prefer to sell them with AIX. I don't think their service organization benefits much from their involvement. Fine; add a third category -- hardware vendors. Like service providers (which was IBM's primary reason for supporting Linux) hardware vendors have generally limited reason to care about the license of the operating systems they support, unless they're interested in protecting details of their hardware implementations (eg, see nvidia binary linux drivers and the regular claim that they are GPL-incompatible). In other words, the GPL isn't business friendly, it's just something that some businesses can be agnostic about.

rbanffy 17y ago

The lead of Linux over BSD has more relation to the GPL and how it is business-safe (as in it's safer to donate source to a GPL project than to a BSD one) than the AT&T lawsuit. If company A donates software S to GPL project G, company B cannot take it and incorporate into its product P unless it's GPL and, thus, usable by A. The same safeguard does not apply to BSD projects, hence, you see companies contributing more to Linux than to BSD.

antonovka 17y ago
The lead of Linux over BSD has more relation to the GPL and how it is business-safe (as in it's safer to donate source to a GPL project than to a BSD one) than the AT&T lawsuit. If it wasn't for the fact that, feature for feature, FreeBSD is generally on-par (or ahead of) Linux, that argument would hold more weight. In fact, for a non-service organization, it's safer to donate your source code to a BSD project because you don't have to donate all of it. See, for instance, Juniper Networks -- one of Cisco's larger competitors, they rely on FreeBSD to power their routing/switching products, and they employee a number of FreeBSD developers in the process. Quite a lot of BSD development is commercially funded, primarily by companies that rely on the code for their own products. Linux, however, sees considerable contributions from companies that rely on Linux for their service offerings (such as IBM) -- Linux has the mindshare advantage, and as such, a service company needs to support it.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  "FreeBSD is generally on-par (or ahead of) Linux" They are both fairly mature implementations of Unix. It is expected they shown little difference in feature set. "it's safer to donate your source code to a BSD project because you don't have to donate all of it." Why would you have to donate all of it? I can donate parts of a program to any project I want. What I shouldn't do in this case is to assign copyright to the project maintainer. Linux kernel developers don't have to assign copyright to the Linux Foundation. The case for Juniper is that they can simply adopt an OS, customize it as much as they want and give back to the developers that gave this to them whatever the developers they paid wrote that is not part of their secret sauce. I think for IBM the case is to make it easier to sell xSeries and zSeries servers if they run Linux better. As for the p's, I think they prefer to sell them with AIX. I don't think their service organization benefits much from their involvement.
  - antonovka 17y ago
    They are both fairly mature implementations of Unix. It is expected they shown little difference in feature set. In that case, how has the GPL and Linux's "business friendly" license made a difference? Why would you have to donate all of it? I can donate parts of a program to any project I want. The GPL. The usual "if you don't distribute it, you don't have to GPL it" argument is disingenuous given that all but a few real-world use cases require distribution. The case for Juniper is that they can simply adopt an OS, customize it as much as they want and give back to the developers that gave this to them whatever the developers they paid wrote that is not part of their secret sauce. Yes, and this is the case for many other businesses that rely on software -- not services -- to cover their bottom line. I think for IBM the case is to make it easier to sell xSeries and zSeries servers if they run Linux better. As for the p's, I think they prefer to sell them with AIX. I don't think their service organization benefits much from their involvement. Fine; add a third category -- hardware vendors. Like service providers (which was IBM's primary reason for supporting Linux) hardware vendors have generally limited reason to care about the license of the operating systems they support, unless they're interested in protecting details of their hardware implementations (eg, see nvidia binary linux drivers and the regular claim that they are GPL-incompatible). In other words, the GPL isn't business friendly, it's just something that some businesses can be agnostic about.