803
Seeing big companies take advantage of BSD or MIT licensed projects without sharing their contributions will always pain me.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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The closest FreeBSD has to users is its proprietary derivatives, at this point FreeBSD might as well be considered proprietary.
At the moment large companies sponsor the development, without being forced to do so. And they allow developers to spend time on the project for free.
The foundation also makes sure that devs sign an agreement otherwise the code is not accepted.
So where is this all proprietary?
Because on Linux the vast majority of its users run a complete operating system under the GPL, meanwhile on FreeBSD the vast majority of people use a proprietary dirivitive. Also significantly more companies sponsor Linux and it's not even comparable.
If you think about how many people use proprietary Android by Google, it is exactly comparable.
Comparing numbers is pointless here. Fact is that GPL has more conditions when you're allowed to use and modify the code. More conditions means more restrictions. And this means, less freedom.
It means less freedom for developers but has proved that it provides more freedom for users. Does MacOS have an open source version? No but ChromeOS and Android do (ChromiumOS and ASOP respectively). Even when companies make a proprietary fork of Linux they still contribute massively in terms of code, not just money.