The first open source Unix based OS wasn't Linux.
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The BSD license encourages (or, at the very least, does not prohibit) companies from taking away stuff from the codebase, enhance it and run, never to look back until they need another software infusion. This does not make it easy for companies like Intel, IBM, Red Hat ot SGI to commit resources to the project, knowing that any other company can take what they developed and close it up. "Show me yours and I will show you mine".
GPL-like licenses prohibit such behaviour and are, perhaps, the reason why there is so much more GPL-ed software around than BSD-ed. That's why the same companies I mentioned before can feel comfortable that while others may use their Linux contributions, they will also be able to use everybody else's code forever. For me, using GPL for community-developed software is a no-brainer. It's not debatable it created a vibrant ecosystem around Linux.
The viability of BSD-ish licenses to create such ecosystems is, however, quite debatable. The Apache Foundation has several projects under such licenses that receive regular investment from big industry players.
Although I doubt there will ever be a clear-cut conclusion, it's fun to watch and participate on the debate.
A project's success can only be attributed to the people working on it, and to sheer luck.
Of course, it is kind of an incentive for companies to contribute back and for the community to have some legal protection, that's why I understand the need for LGPL or MPL. But GPL itself should not be considered open-source ... all the software you or I wrote is and will always be a derivate of public domain, and the usage of a library should not dictate the distribution rights of the final product, but only the distribution rights of the library in question. It's kind of ironic that proprietary platforms like dotNET are more open in this regard.
Also, I don't think Apple did more harm to open-source than Red Hat did. At least they don't pretend to be some kind of saviors of humanity.
You know that RH employees actually work on OSS, right? They're a major contributor to the open-source world, they have a community of enthusiasts (Fedora) and everything goes to upstream.
I say that since we're discussing the GPL above.
If Red Hat vanished tomorrow, Linux would still be developed and maintained, even though it would suffer a setback. That's because there are many other companies and communities that help with that.
The problem is that only Red Hat earns serious money directly from selling Linux licenses, although it relies on contributions of many other companies and individuals to do so. The other companies only earn money from complementary products and consulting services ... services which don't scale unless you're a superstar developer charging $500 / hour or you have lots of resources to hire lots of people to answer support calls.
Although they shouldn't care since they are a company, and I do appreciate their contributions, the culprit is from my pov the GPL license ... and the perfect open-source license is LGPL-like ... that's all I tried to say.
You might say they don't want to streamline themselves out of a job, but there will always be demand for supported versions of Linux, no matter how easy it is to administer.
The term "open source" has a clear, accepted, and well-understood definition -- http://opensource.org/docs/osd -- and the GPL clearly meets this definition. If you don't like the GPL, fine. But don't say that it isn't open source, because that's just not true.
If you choose to give your own private meanings to words, you risk being misunderstood. You also risk being seen as dishonest.
If I want to run away with a library and do my own thing, I don't see a problem with that if I'm giving back the changes to the library itself. Otherwise it cannot be viewed as a public good, as some might suggest. You can't compare a public good, such as a road to GPL software, because you aren't required to transport your merchandise for free on that road ... I know, stupid analogy, but you get my point.
Proprietary software shouldn't be considered a virus that we should get rid of, that's not an open mindset in my book.
WTF?! GPL3 _FORBIDS_ hardware restrictions! It protects _YOUR_ right to use _YOUR STUFF_ the way _YOU_ want.
How that could possibly be construed as a restriction?
The legal guarantee is actually all we need. I'm not sure why that carries any weight with the bunch of ruthless mother...s I work for, but there you have it.
Apache License: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html
Perl's license: http://www.perlfoundation.org/artistic_license_1_0
Python's license: http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.0.1/license/
PostgreSQL's license: http://www.postgresql.org/about/licence
Rails' license: http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/License
More of the open source world does just fine without the GPL than you'd care to admit. The various BSD projects are also doing just fine without constant hype and Slashdot announcements.
60% of projects on Freshmeat use the GNU GPL. If you include other copyleft licenses, such as the LGPL, this is nearer 70%. -- http://freshmeat.net/stats/#license
Copylefted software includes such important projects as:
The Linux kernel.
Languages such as: C, C++, Objective C, Ada (all through gcc); Java.
Database engines: MySQL.
GUIs and toolkits such as: Qt, KDE, GTK+, GNOME.
GCC is particularly important, because nearly all open source projects are compiled with it or written in languages whose implementation uses GCC.
That being said, Freshmeat is a horrible way to support whatever point you were trying to make.
My point was that BSD gets less investment because it's so easy to take away what you contribute and to use it to compete against you.
And thanks for the five pointers. Unless you can come up with a list two orders of magnitude larger, I consider my point fairly well demonstrated.
As I recall this was a big hangup to adoption and/or commercial release. All the hardware vendors were using AT&T licenses and there were $500 licenses for PCs so the market for FreeBSD wasn't so compelling as that for Linux became.
intel, ibm, hp, and sun contribute to linux because it is the popular thing to do now, and it is in their interest to support it as an operating system because they all sell hardware, not (necessarily) because they like linux or use it. sun has its own competing, commercial operating system and yet they contribute to a rival one. why? because they can sell sun servers that run linux.
companies contribute patches, drivers, money, donations, and other resources to many of the free non-gpl projects because they use them internally and it is in their interest to keep those projects going.
bsd licensed code and operating systems have been around for decades. where are your examples of companies taking that code and "closing it up", making significant money off of that work, and without giving anything back?
My understanding is that proprietary operating systems such as MS Windows use the BSD tcp/ip stack. Is this not true?
On the other hand, some userspace parts of Windows are certainly traceable to BSD origins (i.e. some command line networking utilities and large part of POSIX subsystem userspace).
I think Windows Vista got rid of the POSIX part by now. Embrace -> extend -> extinguish -> done.
Vista is probably first version of Windows where Microsoft actually advertises the POSIX part, so it's there and probably it's here to stay.
There seem to be numerous references to BSD code inside Windows TCP stack from the late 90s. Maybe it is only utban legend, but maybe it's not.
Sun Microsystems and BSD? They have given stuff back, but basically, they did take BSD proprietary in a way that it took years to 'recover' from, in terms of a purely open source system.
This debate doesn't have one 'winner'. I suspect if you wanted to do some sort of rigorous, formal, analysis, you would turn to game theory. Barring that, though, I think that there are situations where the GPL is best: everyone can contribute knowing that no one will "run away with the pot", by, say, hiring up the core developers and taking the system proprietary. In other cases, BSD is best - with lots of software that gets used as a library, if it's under the GPL, even if companies want to contribute and be good open source citizens, they really can't, and so you lose any possibility of getting good work from companies. Even the FSF realized this and created the LGPL. So, like many things, it can't be boiled down to a simplistic "this one is better" type answer. It really does depend on the situation.
What are some examples of such things?
If winning users and developers was their primary goal and not just a secondary hope, then they got spanked and sent home, but I don't get that impression from the interview.