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FreeBSD and the GPL

Linus Torvalds has said Linux wouldn't have happened if 386BSD had been around when he started up. We trace the history of FreeBSD and how it's affected the open source world.

By Richard Hillesley, 18 Feb 2010 at 12:27

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The Unix companies took notice of Linux, partly because of its burgeoning popularity and the developer communities that came with it, partly because of its modularity, which made it adaptable and portable, and partly because the licence worked in its favour. If IBM lost by contributing code and features to the Linux kernel, it gained from the contributions of HP and Intel and SGI...

The BSD licence puts its faith in the better side of human nature, and BSD users have always argued that a permissive license is more friendly to business, protects 'IP' and offers real freedom to the end user who is able to do as he or she wishes with the software.

This assumption has worked for Apple and those device manufacturers with a pressing 'need' to guard their "IP", but the GPL has proved its greater value as a collaborative tool - because community, commonality, interoperability and continuity of the software are useful side effects of the licence - and the software remains free.

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2 comments

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Irony

It's telling (and ironic) that the second most popular desktop OS is based on BSD, but nobody cares - because Apple will sue the pants off of you if you even THINK about hacking it yourself. Linux is the OS for the rest of us, and its sprawling growth in virtually all areas of technology indicate a bright future indeed.

By Ip_itproc07081b6 on Monday Feb 22

BSD is not 'more friendly'.

The fact is there is a reason why Linux is so more popular than the BSD's. Its the license stupid. The simple fact is that more developers like the GPL and the way the GPL works compared to the BSD license for their work. The GPL simply attracts more people to be willing to give their time,money and sweat to the community than the BSD, which many open source developers consider a "license-to-steal". If the BSD was so great then it would attract more developer support than GPL projects, but it doesn't and as a open source developer I know exactly why because thats exactly how I feel about it. The proof is in the numbers, some people (who want to make money off of others work) may not like it but they are going to have to get over it or hit the road and go write their own software. Linux is so popluar and has such a large community BECAUSE of the GPL, without it then SOooo many things would have never been implemented or contributed by other people and companies and it would never have had as large a community as it does today. BSD licenses are more attractive to lazy commerical programmers, but much less attractive to actual open source programmers. It really IS as simple as that.

By Milo_Hoffman on Monday Feb 22