Quotes of the week

Again, it's a trade-off of short term versus long-term viability. BSD folks are happy anyone is using their stuff, which is fine, but I don't think it's worth it if the cost is getting code contributions back by the community.

It is in the long term that GPL helps. The example of proprietary binaries is a good one. Over time we see more and more companies moving away from this approach and moving towards actually releasing source code. The pain in the ass to users of having to target specific kernel versions, or not being able to use custom builds, and so on, is just not worth it. Network vendors get it, disk vendors get it, and even graphics vendors are starting to get it (Intel has for years, AMD is finally coming around, and... well, NVidia... never mind).

Sure a startup can whip up a proprietary kernel module and sell the fuck out of it until they can get bought by Google or Cisco or whatever their business plan is, but in the long run it's a costly solution.