IBM did invest in Unix, but under a proprietary license, and called it AIX.
Lost of companies have invested in BSD Unix, but compared to Linux, few have contributed back. Richard On Wednesday, July 21, 2010 07:29:53 Michael Torrie <torr...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 07/21/2010 05:18 AM, justin wrote: > > On Tuesday, July 20, 2010, Michael Torrie <torr...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> The GPL levels the playing field. IBM's contributions can't be used > >> against them, as they could be with a BSD license. Linux gets better > >> for everyone. > > > > > > I'm not sure I follow. How could IBM's contributions be used against > > them under a BSD license? > > Simply put, anything IBM did with a BSD project (and where their code > was released under the BSD), could be used in a closed, proprietary way > in a product that competes with IBM. Whereas with the GPL, IBM's > contributions cannot be closed. If a company chooses to make a superior > product based on IBM's contributions under the GPL, IBM is free to > incorporate their changes as well (it's only fair after all). Level > playing field. IBM works with many open source licenses, but I believe > that the GPL is one of the reasons IBM chose (at one time anyway) to > invest so heavily in Linux. I do not believe IBM would have invested in > the same way in BSD Unix. <snip> /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
