First open source OS

[peterman at eecs.tufts.edu (Charles Peterman)]

There has been a recent die back of both high flying Linux companies
(VALinux, LinuxCare, Loki to name a few) and niche Linux companies
specializing in support.  Looking around, the persistence and
sustainability of small, niche FreeBSD players, seems oddly consistent.
Perhaps it has something to do with the licensing.

The BSD license lets little, not so scary monsters steal their code
without having to give nothing back to the community.  Thus allowing
organisations to make commercial products which attract investors and put
food on the table of their employees.  Contributions back to the community
are usually made by participation in that community. Software that one
writes on top of FreeBSD provides opportunities for employment for those
in the FreeBSD community, and hopefully creates the need for more people
in the FreeBSD community.

Please give consideration to the external realities of producing software
in this less than perfect world before you needlessly vilify the BSD
license.  Without it, some of us who like to write software for a living
would be working, in one guise or another, for Microsoft.  For the
majority of software writers out there, Linux doesn't present enough
commercial opportunity to pay the bills.  Dig?


-Charles

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, ReK2 wrote:

> Linux license in general "GPL" is better than the BSD license in a linux
> ideal way(for linux users, of course BSD users will complain). BSD let big
> monsters steal their code with out having to give back nothing to the
> community.. when the idea of the GNU GPL license simple protect the
> programmer against this, it makes sure that if you take my code you will also
> return any changes you make to it to the community.
> and I LIKE THAT. I don't want no big corporation making money of my code, if
> they are not willing to give my community something back to us to share.
>
> rek2
>