Will GPLv3 Drive Users from Linux to FreeBSD?

An anonymous reader writes "Last week ZDNet put up an article asking a simple question: will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD? It's based on issues raised in the August FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter. That publication features a letter by the vice president of the FreeBSD Foundation, Justin Gibbs, arguing that the GPLv3 restricts the rights of commercial users of open source software, and is just the FSF's first step in changing the GPL in ways that authors of GPL software may not have intended. He suggests that commercial users should seriously consider BSD-licensed software as an alternative if they want to be able to safely ship products in the future. This is especially in light of requirements from the FCC that software running on devices (such as software-defined radios) be end-user replaceable. Gibbs states that the FreeBSD Foundation will provide an alternative to GPLv3'd software, especially in light of Stallman's statement that further GPL revisions are due in the near future. Is this likely to cause discontent among Linux users, or will they mostly ignore it?"

This could be a good thing.

[nurb432]

More users and more developers would be a good thing.

But please, leave the attitude that i see too often in the linux world community. We don't need it on this side of the street.

( attitude is one reason i left the linux camp long ago. And i was there in the very beginning.)

Not a chance.

[Miltazar]

GPLv3 may have some contraversy around it, but some of those reasons stated seem like FUD to me. For instance, they mention that software is required by the FCC to be end-user replaceable in devices such as software driven radios. Last I checked one of the main purposes of GPLv3 was to allow end-user replacement of software. Isn't that why they changed parts of it, so that no tivoization happens again? That alone makes me want to ignore the rest of their reasons. If they can't get that simple part correct, most likely everything else is a load of bull.

Re:This could be a good thing.

[urbanriot]

Where are these elitist forums? I was accepted at many with open arms and, in retrospect, treated respectfully in light of really dumb questions while learning.

You mean you needed more elitism? Phew. I almost abandoned FreeBSD for that reason years ago, and I still am afraid to return to some BSD forums, where Linux users are treated as fanboys. No such thing on Linux forums (yet).

linux user here

[FudRucker]

i do like FreeBSD, PCBSD & DesktopBSD, but PCBSD & DesktopBSD needs a feature during install to allow the person doing the install to allow selecting multiple mount points for / and /usr and /usr/home during the install, seems like with both PCBSD & DesktopBSD i could only select one partition to install everything in, i like to use a small / and a larger /usr and a /usr/home, as a long time slackware user i found FreeBSD's installer to be not much different and did allow selecting multiple mount points, i am looking forward to FreeBSD's next release (6.3? or 7?)

i welcome the competition the *BSDs will bring to the Linux world, and if Ian Murdock can get Solaris in the mix that will be good also...

GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[nweaver]

I was visiting an academic CS research group, which is doing some networking protocol work they want widely adopted (eg, in Windows would be a good start).

Their release of the prototype code was "whatever", so they did it under GPL (well, dual liscence, GPL for everyone, and a free liscence for funders). They were kind of shocked when the link on their web page was now pointing to a GPLv3 description, and I explained the implications.

They may very well change to BSD liscencing.

BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 years

[Kartoffel]

Long ago in a galaxy far far away, Marshall Kirk McKusick wrote:

"You had copyright, which is what the big companies use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free software's way of making sure you can't lock it up; and then Berkeley had what we called 'copycenter,' which is 'take it down to the copy center and make as make as many copies as you want.' You want to go off and do proprietary things with it? Fine, you can do that. You want to keep it out in the Open Source domain? You're welcome to do that as well. In fact, in the end, Richard Stallman had to agree that we had a less restrictive license than he did, although it took pulling some teeth to get him to admit to that."

Re:This could be a good thing.

[TheRaven64]

Same here. I never had a found the BSD communities anything other than helpful (although FreeBSD is the least helpful of the four I've come into contact with). There is much less of the 'everything else sucks' attitude than I find from Linux people; if FreeBSD isn't the right tool for the job, FreeBSD people will often recommend OpenBSD, Solaris, or whatever. If Linux isn't the right tool for the job, Linux people tend to just shout that it is very loudly.

If anything's going to drive people away from Linux to FreeBSD, it's things like changing the VM subsystem or scheduler in the middle of a 'stable' series. I've been running FreeBSD 7-CURRENT (the unstable branch) on my ThinkPad for the last few months, and I've had far fewer problems with it than trying to run even a stable release of Linux.

Re:Get Real

[NoOneInParticular]

I think the point of forcing competitors to follow your lead and open source what they are doing makes a whole lot of sense when you are adding features. Yes, others can still sell it, but if they themselves add value to their offering, you get access to their work. This levels the playing field, making freeloading is more difficult. With BSD license this is not the case. If you add features to BSD, there is no guarantee that others that add features to the offering will let you have access. No tit-for-tat.

Take for example IBM. They have added a whole lot of features to the linux offering in the hope that the services around linux would more than make up for their efforts. If they would have done this on BSD (and why wouldn't they have, you wonder. Didn't they think this through? BSD is so much more business friendly?), any other company could use their enhancements, add their own code, pack it up and sell the enhanced offering with exclusive services around it. IBM would have a reduced offering compared to their competition as the competition has everything IBM has done (and is still doing), but have kept their enhancements private. IBM would always have a worse offering than this competition, forcing it instantly to adding features. tit for tat.

As for Apple's BSD contributions. Apologies (also to the other siblings of this post pointing that out). I was not clear: I was thinking about features, not bugfixes. It of course makes a whole lot of sense that when building upon something, you would contribute bugfixes back to the upstream to minimize maintainance. However, how many actual features have been added by Apple to BSD? How many drivers? Does FreeBSD now runs flawless on Mac hardware due to the presence of up-to-date drivers to all hardware Apple is selling? Is OpenGL support at an all time high? Does the videocam work under freeBSD? Can I get Aqua for FreeBSD, without running Os-X? How much of Apple's 'intellectual property' can now be found in BSD? I don't really know, and it could be that Apple has transformed FreeBSD in the desktop unix of choice (at the expense of OSX), but color me a bit sceptical.