Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 8th Jan 2007 18:08 UTC
BSD and Darwin derivatives "Flameeyes (a Gentoo/FreeBSD developer) recently came up with some serious problems among the various *BSD projects who use BSD-4 licensed code (which is all of them). Even other projects like Open Darwin may be affected. The saga started when he discovered the license problems with libkvm and start-stop-daemon. "libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause." start-stop-daemon links to libkvm, but it's licensed under the GPL which is incompatible with the advertising clause. The good news is that the University of California/Berkley has given people permission to drop the advertising clause. The bad news is that libkvm has code from many other sources and each of them needs to give their permission for the license to be changed. At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors."
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RE[4]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks
by CrazyDude0 on Tue 9th Jan 2007 00:12 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks"
CrazyDude0
Member since:
2005-07-10

The reason is software ecosystem.

1. Universities do research and release code under BSD style license.
2. Many of these projects are very good and picked up by companies to commercialize them.
3. These companies (in turn software engineers in thse companies) makes money and make software engineering a lucrative discipline for students.
4. The companies donate some of the money back to universities.
5. Go to step 1.

This is the ecosystem promoted by BSD. GPL breaks that. If you ever read statistics, students are losing interest in computer science and once they see that it is not financial a good field to support their family, you will see even less people in this field.

That is why i like BSD and not Linux.

The all combined GPL based products have earned less money than even a handful of non-GPL products.

In a country like USA where a doctor charge 300$ for 30 minutes appointment, you need money to live a good life and GPL is not making software as an interesting field to make that kind of money.

I hope this explains well to you now.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 5

RE[5]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks
by RandomGuy on Tue 9th Jan 2007 00:47 in reply to "RE[4]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks"
RandomGuy Member since:
2006-07-30

"In a country like USA where a doctor charge 300$ for 30 minutes appointment, you need money to live a good life and GPL is not making software as an interesting field to make that kind of money."

Here we go again... *sigh*
Seriously, I don't know how often you visit the doctor but I've read this a couple of times too often.
I'm not a pro-GPL guy but this sort of pseudo argument makes me sick.
I know you didn't say that but it sounds like:
Oh, no! I got children and a wife, I cannot develop GPL software or we'd all starve.
I developed GPL software so I had no money to go and see a doctor and died of cancer! You see, GPL _is_ cancer!

You've never heard of people working for companies on GPL software?
Or people coding in their free time just for the fun of it?
Seriously, get a life!

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1

CrazyDude0 Member since:
2005-07-10

Count all the companies and tell me the number of employees in a GPL based software companies and non-GPL based.

I think you got the answer.

I don't know if you live in US or not but even if you don't go to doctor, you still have to take medical insurance because without it, if an emergency comes up, you are screwed. Medical bill range many times upto 50000$ or more.

The typical good medical insurance cost around 1000$ a month for family still for stuff like dental i pay around 100$ per month out of pocket.

Now think of housing in US, you pay around 3000$ per month for a 3 bedroom house.

Once you start looking at reality, you will get the picture.

I am not anti OSS, i don't like GPL. I think GPL prohibits innovation and prevents commercialization of software in a very captialist world.

So unless you change the world from capitalist to something where everyone gets equal share of pie, i don't think i will ever support GPL.

Btw RandomGuy there is no need to do personal attack just because you disagree:) So take a chill pill.

Edited 2007-01-09 01:10

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 0

RE[6]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks
by arielb on Tue 9th Jan 2007 01:14 in reply to "RE[5]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks"
arielb Member since:
2006-11-15

only big companies that sell support to big companies make money from GPL. Small companies that sell software that don't require support won't make any money from GPL.

So we see that GPL favors the rich: big companies or those who can afford to give things away for free.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1

RE[5]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks
by cyclops on Tue 9th Jan 2007 13:42 in reply to "RE[4]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks"
cyclops Member since:
2006-03-12

You hate *BSD but love the license, and love Microsoft.

The ecosystem you describe is...Universities do work which Microsoft can pass off as their own.

I'm 100% certain that most Universities expect to get money from their projects one way or another today, and I'm not sure why you would expect them to do otherwise.

BTW the software ecosystem(sic) of GPL existed before any other, GPL is just a license that enforces it.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3