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Your distinctions in reality are pretty meaningless, you can be an open source guy using the GPL (look at Linus) or a free software guy using BSD. Both movements overlap enourmously, and the differences between them are very small compared to the rest of the software ecosystem. I wish we could stop all the silly infighting and see that we are all heading in the same direction.

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The issue is that I did not like and do not agree with the statement "Google and Facebook would never exist the way they do today without the free software movement."

(There's the trivial sense of "way they do today" in the Microsoft, which uses some BSD technology in Windows, would also be here in the "way they do today" without that technology, but it would be generally the same.)

Do you agree with the above statement? If the free software movement had not existed, would Google and Facebook be seriously different than what they have become? How so?

Also, who is a member of the free software movement who also uses primarily a BSD license?

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