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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 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
    "In that case, how has the GPL and Linux's "business friendly" license made a difference?" There are probably more company-sponsored developers contributing to Linux than there are FreeBSD developers. There is a rich ecosystem with companies making money out of support assurance. In the case of FreeBSD, the obvious case is like Juniper: embed and close up. They give back whatever they think is not important because they don't want to spend money maintaining. "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." If I contribute something to a GPL project, the copyright is still mine. Nobody but me - and that is the difference that made MySQL possoble - can distribute it in violation of the GPL. Also, the rationale that IBM donates resources to Linux in order to create an advantage to their service organization simply doesn't make sense. All of Linux is open. There are no secret advantages there. The only not patently impossible scenario here is IBM somewhat steering the development of Linux in ways that favour them in the future. But this is a very long shot. GPL incentives sharing. BSD doesn't. It's not anti-business, but anti-effort-duplication. And, BTW, I wouldn't be surprised if the Nvidia's binary driver were more related to the bad things that could happen to Windows support for Nvidia GPUs in the future.

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
  "In that case, how has the GPL and Linux's "business friendly" license made a difference?" There are probably more company-sponsored developers contributing to Linux than there are FreeBSD developers. There is a rich ecosystem with companies making money out of support assurance. In the case of FreeBSD, the obvious case is like Juniper: embed and close up. They give back whatever they think is not important because they don't want to spend money maintaining. "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." If I contribute something to a GPL project, the copyright is still mine. Nobody but me - and that is the difference that made MySQL possoble - can distribute it in violation of the GPL. Also, the rationale that IBM donates resources to Linux in order to create an advantage to their service organization simply doesn't make sense. All of Linux is open. There are no secret advantages there. The only not patently impossible scenario here is IBM somewhat steering the development of Linux in ways that favour them in the future. But this is a very long shot. GPL incentives sharing. BSD doesn't. It's not anti-business, but anti-effort-duplication. And, BTW, I wouldn't be surprised if the Nvidia's binary driver were more related to the bad things that could happen to Windows support for Nvidia GPUs in the future.