On 29/03/2009 08:26, Mike Parker wrote:
Yigal Chripun wrote:
How many companies do you know that use the BSD for their products?
BSD is used by universities and non-profit organizations not companies.
claiming that BSD > GPL in a corporate environment is simply wrong.
That's not the point. Plenty of companies use open source libraries in
their code, even if they don't open source the end product. BSD is
friendlier to them because they aren't forced to open up everything that
touches it. GPL is viral. Use one GPL library and your whole project is
tainted. Philosophically, GPL gives freedom to the end user. BSD leaves
freedom with the developer. IMO, the latter is where it should be, as it
is the developer who expends the resources to create the product in the
first place.
you contradict yourself. if a company uses open source libraries in
their products than they are the *users* of the code, and the
*developers* are those who *created* the library. what you meant to say
is that many companies _exploit_ non free open source code (BSD and
such) in their closed source products. You do all the hard work, give
away your library for free, and those companies exploit that to enlarge
their profit margins, after all they invested much less time/money in
the product. if you really intended this outcome, you just robbed
someone's job at that same company.
The GPL gives freedom to both the developers and the end-users while the
BSD doesn't give any freedoms at all, to no one. That is why there are
many successful companies that base their business model on free
licenses like the GPL and zero companies that use the BSD. and that is
the point.
