FSF settles with Cisco [LWN.net]

FSF settles with Cisco

Posted May 21, 2009 16:40 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

The BSD license is only friendlier for companies that don't want to contribute anything back.

With the GPL license you have lots of companies that actually contribute back and use the fact that it's open source and it will stay open source to be competitive. They are unable or not willing to produce the entire software stack on their own so they are able be competitive by working with the 'community'.

With the BSD license that is much harder because as soon as you contribute code back to the original product a competitor of yours can take your work, improve it, then sell it closed source.

This puts you in a competitive disadvantage since both companies have X amount of dollars to spend on development. You spend X, then they take it, spend X then keep it closed source. So your competitor is getting X^2 development benefits for every X amount you spend.

So, in fact, the GPL is VERY business friendly.

And it shows. Despite all the horseshit about BSD being more business-friendly it is in fact Linux-based or Linux-oriented companies are the ones that tend to be much much more commercially oriented.

IBM, Redhat, Novell, Intel, MySQL, etc etc. These are all large and very commercially oriented companies that either contribute heavily to GPL'd software, efforts that cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, for the very specific purpose of commercially exploiting GPL software.

So the BSD rhetoric doesn't play out that well.

Sure sure there are companies like Microsoft or whoever else is happy to suck in huge amounts of BSD code for various products, but the BSD folks won't see a dime, a patch, or any credit, from the vast majority of companies that use it... so progress will always be slow.

Which is fine if that is what the BSD folks want. Different licenses for different purposes and focuses.

Personally I like having a competitive modern operating system to use on my desktop and servers, so I am very happy about the GPL.

FSF settles with Cisco

Posted May 21, 2009 22:06 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

You actually got it completely backwards. ;-)

For a company that doesn't want to give anything back, there is no difference between GPL and BSD
- they won't write any significant code, so the copyleft doesn't make any difference for them.

For a company that attempts to invest a significant amount of development, GPL is much worse
than BSD, because it forces them to give all their modifications away, immediately. So, when you
develop something that is derived from GPL, your competitors will take all your changes for free and
then sell the same product cheaper, because it was you who paid for all this.

With BSD, it's not the case. If you develop something large, you can keep your changes for yourself
as long as you like; you don't need to give them to your competitors.

Your idea was tested... and it failed

Posted May 22, 2009 6:32 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

So, when you develop something that is derived from GPL, your competitors will take all your changes for free and then sell the same product cheaper, because it was you who paid for all this.

Sorry, but this is the same flaved argument nVidia is pushing - and it was proved again and again that it's bogus. By the time competitors are getting access to your code it's already to late: your product is on sale and theirs is not. But the "lost productiovity" with BSD is much worse threat. Read this. Yes, it's true that FreeBSD and NetBSD have good kernels today - years after Linux. And they head-start! BSD was mature OS when Linux was a joke!

What does it mean for business? Not only must you write your top-sikrit proprietary part, you must spend enormous amount of money to play catch-up with GPLed offers! Not a good business investment at all.

Your idea was tested... and it failed

Posted May 22, 2009 9:24 UTC (Fri) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

Yes, "my idea" was tested - and it was proven to be true, as demonstrated by Apple, Juniper or
Netapp. You don't have this kind of products based on Linux - simply because if something takes
years to develop, it doesn't matter that your competitors will start to sell it three months later than
you.

As for speed of development - the reason for this is very simple: marketing. Linux was - and still is
- all about guerilla marketing and making much noise about minor implementation details. BSD
focused on technical stuff instead. That's why you don't hear much about BSD, even in areas where
it's technically ahead of Linux.

Ah, the glory of things long gone

Posted May 22, 2009 11:25 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

You don't have this kind of products based on Linux - simply because if something takes years to develop, it doesn't matter that your competitors will start to sell it three months later than you.

Sorry, but no. We don't see these kind of products based on Linux because it takes decade or so to create polished product. When Apple's, Juniper's or Netapp's current offers were developed Linux was a toy system. Today Linux is more capable - and today Juniper and Netapp are playing with Linux because it makes no sense to continue with *BSD - but before they'll drop old *BSD-based systems they need to have replacements for them so *BSD-based stuff is not going away overnight. Apple is too tied to current platfrom to easily switch sides.

Linux was - and still is - all about guerilla marketing and making much noise about minor implementation details. BSD focused on technical stuff instead. That's why you don't hear much about BSD, even in areas where it's technically ahead of Linux.

Sorry, but it's just not true anymore. Was not true for many years in fact. When BSD were ahead they often trumped their advantage and were quite vocal - today the only reason to use *BSD is legacy: if you have products and personell trained for *BSD - it's probably Ok to continue to use it. But new projects? Linux with very few exceptions.

Yes, it's true that there exist small niches where *BSD still have advantage over Linux - but it becomes harder and harder to find them. And so even companies pretty dedicated to *BSD for years (aforementioned Juniper and Netapps) are starting to toy with Linux.

We see reinnasance of BSD licensing in the compilers space (rise of LLVM) but it remains to be seen how good this retailation will be - and all other free non-GPL compilers are history (or sideshow at best) today.