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Comment by class4behavior | Hacker News Reader

>There was a time when I was younger when I really liked the GPL (v2), but as I got older I realized that even though I am a strong supporter of Open Source (...), and I strive to use only Open Source components, I've always been perfectly fine with some applications that are proprietary.

Whenever I hear someone start to reason with "as I got older", I interpret it as: I've gone back to the fridge more than a dozen times by now so I've lowered my standards far enough to not care anymore.

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It's funny as I've gone the other direction. Particularly motivated by all the companies that have gone from permissive to source available citing their need for a reward while ignoring that they themselves were the beneficiary of permissive licenses has soured me on licensing any of my own stuff permissively and left me considering the GPL or AGPL specifically so such companies would have to drop any of my libraries to make such a move.

Generally I agree although in case of the GPL there's a lot to criticize especially about the whole GNU project in my opinion. It's hard to identify with it these days and at the same time seeing how so many projects with less restrictive licenses flourish. Also working at a day job with GPL isn't exactly inspiring

Neither the culture of some particular working group nor the well-known inherent challenges of GPL licensing itself - many of which others licensing models certainly share - are legitimate arguments against the method itself.

This kind of line of reasoning is like supporting fossil fuels because they work, are well-understood, employ a lot of people, and the run the global economy while the future of green energy is still uncertain, a lot of tech not even invented, and no infrastructure established.

I think that the GPL philosophy is correct: if you modify an open source software you have to release the work you did back to the community. Without it Linux wouldn't be the thing that is today, rather there would be a ton of proprietary Linux variations, or at least a ton of proprietary Linux kernel modules, that the user cannot modify or inspect.

If we talk about FreeBSD, the reason why FreeBSD is not successful as Linux is... the fact that is not GPL licensed. Multiple companies (including Apple for OSX, Sony for the PlayStation OS, and many others) user FreeBSD in their products, but since the license allows them they do not release their improvement to the public. Meaning that the project evolves very slowly, or doesn't evolve at all.

Doesn’t the fact that Sony and Apple put FreeBSD-derivatives into more end users hands than Linux ever reached (depending on how you view Android) count as being successful?

Sony and Apple don't benefit from each other's changes, and neither do users of FreeBSD.

I like that you brought up Android, because the experience in shipping kernels to billions of devices has led to numerous upstream improvements, as well as an ecosystem of devices that support other Linux-based operating systems. Sony and Apple don't enable this by forking FreeBSD.

If Sony and Apple contribute their changes upstream, they benefit from each other’s changes.

If they do not contribute upstream, they do not benefit from each other’s changes.

That’s their choice. It’s arrogantly coercive and authoritarian to try to use market position to force them to make one choice or another.

Wasn't the Android project criticized for years because they didn't put in the effort for upstreamable changes?

After all the modifications mentioned are probably quite use-case specific. Not sure how much this can be generalized

Apple’s BSD stuff is mostly open sourced by them though: https://opensource.apple.com/releases/

It used to be even more comprehensive, which enabled projects like OpenDarwin to exist, but yes upstream can benefit to at least some degree.

And this happens even though there is no copyleft forcing them. Remember that if you retain your own fork, you now also own the maintenance, including aligning your proprietary changes with incoming upstream stuff.

Well if you count Linux devices... probably one have 10 or more in their homes, just count the number of embedded devices that has Linux inside, routers, smart TV, set top boxes, NAS, IP security cameras, VOIP phones, hell this day you probably have Linux even in washing machines!

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