The future of NetBSD

[Jeff Rollin]

On 31/08/06, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> On Thursday 31 August 2006 14:47, Jeff Rollin wrote:
> > On 31/08/06, Paul Saab <ps at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Jeff Rollin (jeff.rollin at gmail.com) wrote:
> > > > If Yahoo (to pick the one big vendor I remember making a big thing
> of
> > > using
> > > > a BSD) don't reincorporate their changes, perhaps that's because the
> > > license
> > > > allows them not to?
> > >
> > > If you think that Yahoo! has not given back to the FreeBSD project,
> > > then you are sorely mistaken.  Let me count the ways that Yahoo!
> > > has given back.
> >
> >
> > As I said, Yahoo are the one big company I remember being cited as using
> a
> > BSD. My point was not that "Yahoo does not give back to the FreeBSD
> > project," but that the BSD licence *allows* them not to give back in a
> way
> > that the GPL does not allow (say) Google not to give back to the Linux
> > project(s).
>
> That's not true.  If Google makes an enhancement to Linux that they only
> distribute internally, they are only required to make the source code
> available internally.  You only have to give your patches to the folks
> you distribute the resulting binaries to.



I'm perfectly well aware of that too.

Thus, if you merely make appliances
> that manage/produce content and sell the content but not the appliances,
> you
> can mix propietary code with the GPL to your heart's content.  But really,
> the economics of open source is actually more complicated than the GPL
> folks
> understand.


I think the GPL folks understand the economics of open source a lot better
than the anti-GPL folks give them credit for.

Jeff.