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Comment by dingi | Hacker News Reader

copy-left licenses are better for users.

But BSD devs have their own argument https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/

Yeah. Just look what they got from that. Big corps using their work with hardly any upstream contribution (Apple, Sony, etc). At this rate BSDs will be deader than dead within a few years.

I don't know about you, but I can't eat code. That said, some people don't care about outside contributions or reuse, so I guess I find the pro-GPL partisanship more than a little misguided. Some people just have different goals, and that doesn't make them better or worse, just different.

And a project can't survive without the code.

And even then companies are famous for leeching on open source projects, with gpl you at least have some hope of companies leaving you alone or giving back something.

> leeching

How is it "leeching" if I deliberately release my source code under a BSD license because I don't care if other people use it or not? It can't be "leeching" if I don't care about their contributions either. The only other scenario that would apply is if I wanted to be paid for my work... in which case neither a BSD-like license, nor the GPL, would be adequate.

This is the problem I have with GPL partisans: They refuse to accept that projects can be completed, or that anyone can have any interests other than GPL-compatible ones.

Using a pet project nobody is expected to use as an example is a nil point, I could release a pet project in "WTFPL" or "Fuck You Nobody Is Allowed To Use" license and it wouldn't make a difference , if the concerns are that low for said project.

Monetization in FOSS is a systemic issue, with few exceptions, but even then you are far more likely that companies won't want to risk leeching with a GPL like license than a permissive one because of the code sharing requirement, which MIT/BSD at best only incentives as goodwill because of complexity maintaining the project they rely on.

I also find it funny you create a strawman, i never stated any adoration of GPL.

> And even then companies are famous for leeching on open source projects, with gpl you at least have some hope of companies leaving you alone or giving back something.

Especially when you make clear the option to dual license and let them use it under a MIT/BSD style license, or something custom, if they pay you an appropriate amount.

And that's the reason for their downfall.

> downfall

What downfall, exactly? If I want to get paid, the GPL doesn't help me with that. If I don't care about outside contributions, the GPL doesn't provide any advantage. Insofar as I have written something that is complete in itself then a BSD license makes perfect sense.

> Big corps using their work with hardly any upstream contribution (Apple, Sony, etc).

Meanwhile regular commits from / sponsored by Netflix, Dell-EMC Isilon, Juniper, Mellanox, Intel, Amazon and Microsoft (for network drivers), etc.

Netcraft confirms it.

>Yeah. Just look what they got from that.

An absolute great OS?

>hardly any upstream contribution (Apple, Sony, etc)

Sony paid FreeBSD dev's, and the Apple kernel and coreutils are opensource, it's just they have not done anything FreeBSD is interested in, not like for example Netflix with in-kernel tls.

>At this rate BSDs will be deader than dead within a few years.

Yes yes you said that already 20 years ago, it's probably time to overthink it.

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