Moglen: How Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux Foundation?
Moglen: How Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux Foundation?
Posted Apr 13, 2016 7:16 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)In reply to: Moglen: How Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux Foundation? by Cyberax
Parent article: Moglen: How Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux Foundation?
Perhaps there is a time and place thing here. Some projects might be fine with a BSD license, things which are low level infrastructure maybe, and if you are largely afraid of forks and people not contributing. It is hard to say how much MORE these projects would have had in terms of contributions if they were GPL but it is undeniable that some parties wouldn't have used the software and thus perhaps not contributed. Hard to say how the balance works out but certainly the projects do fine with the license as it is.
On the other hand a business model like ownCloud would not work with the BSD (we have to push frequently to have ppl comply with the GPL) and if consumers care about control over their devices the GPL is quite crucial as well.
Posted Apr 13, 2016 7:18 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
Do you think nobody would have written a minimalistic Linux distro for routers without WRT? It was not even the first user-friendly web-enabled "router type" distribution!
Posted Apr 13, 2016 7:23 UTC (Wed)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
The only reason we have support for the majority of routers in *any* distribution is because the vendors released their source code, frequently as a result of either past enforcement actions or the threat of future ones. Just as in the phone market, router vendors have demonstrated that they have no interest in releasing their source code unless compelled to.
Moglen: How Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux Foundation?
Moglen: How Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux Foundation?