Let's Try BSD, Part 1 of 7: Introduction (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD)

Jay🚩@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 143 points –
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BSD might be faster but companies choose BSD because the BSD License is much more flexible than the Linux General Public License. Apple was even able to create their own license, the APSL. They would not be able to do that using Linux.

While that is true, the question is whether that's a good thing, or not, and for whom.

It’s a good thing for the owners of the codebase, but often, a bad thing for the community (even if the community contributes to said codebase).

For example, FOSS maintainers sometimes will (want to) relicense to protect their income stream:

https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium-fabric/issues/2400

https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/pull/150

While corporations might literally have maintainers sign away their rights so they can take the work from their own community:

https://lwn.net/Articles/937369/ (canonical requires a CLA, though this + the subsequent re-license might have happened anyway)

https://lwn.net/Articles/935592/ (RPM spec files are MIT licensed at the Fedora level. There are likely chnages to RPM files contributed by the community that are now source-restricted in RHEL)

https://networkbuilders.intel.com/docs/networkbuilders/accelerate-snort-performance-with-hyperscan-and-intel-xeon-processors-on-public-clouds-1680176363.pdf (See section 2.2. Previously, this work was BSD)

Mixed bag, really.