With a recent change that removed dialog in favor of bsddialog, FreeBSD has now retired the last piece of GPL-licensed code in its base system. Although the impact of this change will be minor for …
  • pelya@lemmy.worldEnglish
    60 minutes

    In a sane and healthy software company, they would contribute their changes back to BSD just because it makes easier to apply latest BSD changes amd security fixes.

    Most companies wont. They fork, modify the BSD code for their specific hardware, sell it, and never ever update thier software.

  • Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌@piefed.worldEnglish
    1 hour

    Seeing where BSDs are today vs Linux/GNU I would say history made it clear already.

    Capitalism will 100% use and give zero every single time when permitted.

  • kingthrillgore@lemmy.mlEnglish
    41 minutes

    Creating a whole unix-like ecosystem without GNU has been the goal since LLVM launched.

  • Mereo@piefed.caEnglish
    5 hours

    In my opinion, I just don’t understand permissive licenses. For example, with FreeBSD’s license, companies can essentially “steal” the hard-earned efforts and use them to enrich themselves. For example, FreeBSD could have been a gaming OS, as the PlayStation’s OS is FreeBSD. However, they didn’t give anything back to the community.

    Copyleft licenses, on the other hand, require companies to contribute any changes they make to the code back to the community so that it benefits the community as a whole. In this case, there’s no “stealing”, companies need to respect the community’s efforts by giving back.

    That’s my two cents anyway.

    • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
      2 hours

      If freebsd was copyleft PlayStation would’ve never used it in the first place. Same as the BSD TCP/IP stack with windows.

    • pmk@piefed.caEnglish
      50 minutes

      It’s not stealing when you willingly allow someone to use it however they want. OpenBSD writes: “We want to make available source code that anyone can use for ANY PURPOSE, with no restrictions. We strive to make our software robust and secure, and encourage companies to use whichever pieces they want to.” If your goal is to polish something like OpenSSH until it’s as good as it can be, the world is better off when robust and secure software spread, also into proprietary systems. When companies use OpenSSH, it does not take away anything from OpenBSD, they are not competitors.

    • 0x0@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5 hours

      Both licenses were made before late stage capitalism started in earnest, and when the Net was young, so there’s the matter of perspective.
      Imho the GPL was born out of ideology, whereas the BSD was out of a murican university environment (i.e. preparing proto-capitalists to enter the market).
      The debate is endless.

  • ☂️-@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4 hours

    pushoverOS has finally finished it’s transition to free repository for oligarchs.

  • cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish
    9 hours

    The upshot of the BSD-license in the case of FreeBSD is that it has found it and its components used in many commercial products, including MacOS/OS X, the PlayStation’s Orbis OS, and of course the BSD networking stack is happily used in Windows, macOS and just about anywhere else. Meanwhile the GPL forced Linksys to open the firmware to its WRT54G series of routers, ultimately leading to the development of OpenWrt and similar projects.

    They make it sound like the *WRTs were the worst thing to happen to consumer networking and that corporations not being required to contribute back to projects has made BSD stronger, rather than given companies free labor. I find the *BSDs to be pretty interesting, but let’s not pretend that they’re benefiting from companies using their work. Very shilly tone to this article.

      • cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish
        5 hours

        Seriously, it’s the only reason I bought one. Plus, my WRT-54gl is still supported 20 years later on DD-WRT, not that it’s all that useful at 100mbit. I still use it for testing.

        • Peffse@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 hours

          I still keep a WRT54Gv3 around with DD-WRT because of devices that require WEP. (cough cough)

          It’s really nice having it set up as a subnet with a ton of restrictions. Something it would be incapable of stock.

    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8 hours

      So this sounds like a bad thing then…

      Like if having gpl code in free bsd forced all these companies to be more open with their software, and now they can be more closed with it, isn’t that bad?

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5 hours

        Yes, it’s bad. Permissive licensing (instead of copyleft) is for cucks.

      • cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish
        7 hours

        It allows freebsd to be true to the BSD license, and I agree with the author that it makes licensing easier. BSD will always be free and incredibly permissive, and I don’t see this changing anything. But a lot of the strides that linux has made is because people need to release their changes.

        BSD on the other hand doesn’t require giving back, so you get Apple that was the largest company in the world building off of the work of FreeBSD. I certainly don’t see FreeBSD being comparable to macOS like Fedora is to RHEL. It’s more like Apple took what they wanted and walked away.

    • RejZoR@lemmy.mlEnglish
      9 hours

      WRT54G were the best shit back then. So much choice with firmware, loved the Tomato firmware and its flexible QoS. Good times.

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
      8 hours

      yeah I liked that bsd really kept to the unix style but license wise gpl is what I respect.

      • cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish
        5 hours

        Agreed. I also want to learn more about micro kernels as well, which the BSDs use.

        I think we have a pretty interesting dynamic viewing the two different licensing schemes. Linux/gnu has been making some huge strides, whereas BSD is kind of just very slowly chugging along in niche areas. It does seem to be pretty damn good at the things it does, though. I honestly feel like the BSD license should be a better license because it gives more freedom, but with the existence of greed and capitalism GPL is required to get profit seekers (greedy bastards) to play nice.

        Edit: I was wrong, got it mixed up with gnu Hurd when looking things up in the past

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5 hours

          I honestly feel like the BSD license should be a better license because it gives more freedom

          It does not. Saying the BSD license gives more freedom because it lets developers choose to close up the code is like saying the Confederacy gave more freedom because it let white people choose to own slaves.

        • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
          6 hours

          I will add to the agreement. I wish gpl was not needed. I did not realize any bsds used micro kernels though.

          • cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish
            5 hours

            Now you’ve got me questioning myself, never claimed to be an expert…

            Edit: yep I’m wrong, a microkernel was developed, but looks like it eventually made it’s way to GNU Hurd and not really implemented into the BSDs. I recall coming across when looking into different OSs, I guess I got it mixed up.

    • bluGill@fedia.io
      9 hours

      You are very shrilly yourself. Plenty of companies have shown it isn’t hard to take GPL without contributed back. There are high odds you are using a chrome based browser to read this - did you know that is a GPL project because once upon a time it was khtml (from the KDE project), but the changes were never contributed back. Many embedded companies have their own fork of linux as well - their changes are all available as the GPL requires, but the changes won’t be accepted to the kernel as is and so the fact that they are available is useless.

      Meanwhile there are many companies using FreeBSD who choose to contribute their changes back, just like some companies choose to contribute back to various GPL projects they use.

      • cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish
        6 hours

        There are high odds you are using a chrome based browser to read this - did you know that is a GPL project because once upon a time it was khtml (from the KDE project), but the changes were never contributed back.

        Chromium is what you’re ignoring here, and they are contributed back.

        Many embedded companies have their own fork of linux as well - their changes are all available as the GPL requires, but the changes won’t be accepted to the kernel as is and so the fact that they are available is useless.

        And that’s fine, if someone ever did want to pick it up, they could.

        Meanwhile there are many companies using FreeBSD who choose to contribute their changes back.

        I didn’t say there weren’t people/companies contributing to BSD. I am saying that since they aren’t required to, BSD isn’t getting the level of support it deserves. The companies contributing to GPL projects are required by law to release the source, so they might as well contribute to the project. I can guarantee there would be a lot less progress in linux/gnuland if releasing the source wasn’t required.

      • missingno@fedia.io
        5 hours

        What do you mean “never contributed back”? All of these projects give their source code back, as the GPL requires.

        • bluGill@fedia.io
          57 minutes

          The source is available but not in a form that will be accepted upstream. Often for good reason, but that doesn’t do you any good.

      • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6 hours

        Um, so yay for companies that have stolen open code and not contributed back? What even is your angle here?

        In the end every licence is only as strong as your lawyers. And even if they don’t get merged into the main tree, their code being available is still a big win for users and devs alike

      • Axolotl@feddit.itEnglish
        7 hours

        The problem is that with GPL we can at least cherrypick the features and implement them ourselves, with BSD, everthing get closed and you get fucked

      • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        9 hours

        So your argument is that because there are some exceptions to a rule, the opposite of that rule is true.

        • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3 hours

          Basically his argument is that because some companies choose to contribute back to BSD projects even though they aren’t required to, and because some GPL projects choose not to merge some changes from downstream forks, the GPL and BSD licenses are effectively the same. I think the flaw in this logic should be pretty apparent. I think the GPLv2 vs. GPLv3 debate is a lot more interesting, particularly since Linus has come out against GPLv3.