Technological advantages over Linux

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 19:53:03 +0100
Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Feb 2020 22:30:23 +0000 (UTC), Paul Pathiakis via
> freebsd-questions wrote:
> > If you're trying to convince management, I'd suggest researching
> > who has based their products on FreeBSD....List of products based
> > on FreeBSD
> 
> That is a problem. Reason:
> 
> FreeBSD's license, often criticized as a "rape me license",
> allows using, modifying and redistribution software based
> on FreeBSD without contributing back, or acknowledging that
> FreeBSD played a significant role.

	The copyright notice has to be included so you can find out, for
example it is no secret that Isilon OneFS is based on FreeBSD but there's
a lot of proprietary code and commercial secrets in it which would be
impossible under the GPL.

> Of course
> manufacturers won't admit they used FreeBSD when they can
> advertise the software or firmware of their products as
> their very own invention. :-)

	They do have to own up to it being there (by publishing the
copyright message), they just don't have to share what they've added to it.
Most do contribute back fixes and improvements that don't reveal their
trade secrets partly because it's the right thing to do (the developer's
reason) but perhaps mostly because maintaining patches against a moving
target is a lot of work (the bean counter's reason).

	Enlightened self-interest is enough for most without something like
the GPL to force things.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve at sohara.org>