Bye bye BSD, Hello Linux: A Sys Admin's Story

[Del_]

GPLv3 is a non-starter in the Enterprise. GPLv2 is still used and will continue to be but no company with proprietary information will ever use GPLv3. Bring it up in a meeting and get laughed out of the room.

BSD on the other hand, no qualms from the legal department whatsoever.

I have no interest in being dragged into this mud-slinging contest, but your statement needs to be answered since it seems to be the most popular astroturfing bullshit on the net today, and left un-checked will leave readers with the impression that it is true.

There is no question that you have some enterprise forces not particularly fond of GPL, and that v3 provided a nice opportunity for those forces to play on chisms in the communitiy. Apple comes to mind.

There are only two significant differences between GPLv2 and GPLv3. Those are the anti-Tivo clause and the patent protection. The patent protection is a no-brainer, it is basically the same as what you find in Apache 2.0 and widely adopted in enterprise (except for Apple and a couple of other patent trolls). The anti-Tivo clause is basically only potentially problematic for vendors of embedded devices, so a rather small part of the enterprises of this world, and even for them it seems only problematic for the low leve code (none of them have issues with Samba using GPLv3, and why should they).

I have brought GPLv3 up in many meetings and never been laughed at.

[russofris]

I don't think so. What changed in apple that led to their peak (which, of course, is on its way back down), was a couple of new gadgets that they marketed very aggressively

I do not necessarily disagree with this. I do think that iPodPhone/Pad was the catalyst for quite a few Mac converts, though by 2007, the Mac (and OSX) was in good enough shape to handle the influx of new customers. The Pre-x86 Macs, with the possible exception of the last G5 models, were a bit silly in my opinion.

I think that their diminished 'peak', is more a result of market saturation than increased competition.

[droidhacker]

GPLv3 is a non-starter in the Enterprise. GPLv2 is still used and will continue to be but no company with proprietary information will ever use GPLv3. Bring it up in a meeting and get laughed out of the room.
BSD on the other hand, no qualms from the legal department whatsoever.

That is a massive over-generalization, and makes several assumptions that are very far from universal.
Many "enterprise" uses of open source software will find GPLv3 to be HIGHLY practical.

Imagine the scenario where your customers are highly technical. Your product is something INTENDED for customization. You write up something special for your customers to use, and want to make sure that your COMPETITORS can't tivoize your software into THEIR hardware, which is something that their application of your fancy features would require. In this example, you would pick GPLv3 because it both makes the code available for your customers, and makes it UNUSABLE to your competitors. Now instead of their customers being able to get your features on their hardware, they HAVE to go to you. GPLv3 = profit++.

Every license has its place.
Every scenario is different.
You pick the license that makes the most sense for YOUR application.

[droidhacker]

The BSD license is very attractive for companies that want to have their own proprietary OS running on something like say, a router or server. Otherwise they just run Linux with their proprietary software running on top. The other thing it's great for is educational purposes. Some students actually develop something that people would buy, and they can sell it to a company.

BSD vs GPL really doesn't have any impact on servers, since the GPL only obligates you to provide source back to distributions of GPL protected code itself, not to the services offered through the use of GPL code. The problem here is that one of the big barriers to selecting BSD as the kernel behind some proprietary device like a router, is that BSD simply does not have the hardware support for those devices. The big reason for the propagation of Linux is, in fact, the GPL. If you want to ship something with Linux running on it, then whatever changes you made to support it are now available for everybody. That makes it much much simpler to adopt for the next guy, because at least part of their work has already been done for them.

Yes, the GPL can be a barrier to selecting Linux as well, so it comes down to deciding between doing more work to keep your secrets and reinventing several wheels in the process, or doing less work and sharing it. Unless there is something tangible to gain by keeping your source code secret, you will obviously choose Linux. With Linux, you hire one kernel coder for a couple of weeks to implement support for your new hardware. With BSD, you hire three dozen for six months.... but that's ok, because your super secret source code remains a secret.

[droidhacker]

The very source of Apple's success since Jobs took back the reigns was these two and only these two things - the paradigm shift from OS 9 to OS X (incorporating BSD/UNIX/Mach as the OS driving their new platform), and the second, equally as important event - moving away from PPC to Intel. These events introduced the pivotal moment, the paradigm shift that gave rise to the new Apple.

Cook could do the same - but I'm not yet seeing how Linux would make an equally great impact in their already successful OS/hardware portfolio, particularly when you consider they have resources to turn Mach or whatever BSD aspect of the underlying OS they want, inside out.... One thing I'd love to see is the death of Windows hastened as much as possible... so maybe something along them lines.... not sure...

I don't think so. What changed in apple that led to their peak (which, of course, is on its way back down), was a couple of new gadgets that they marketed very aggressively -- first their mp3 players, then their phones. That is all. Although their PC's did certainly improve (from a technical standpoint) with the move from version 9 to 10, it really didn't have any huge impact on their customers, since the BSD part of their OS is outside of the awareness of any of their [real] customers. Their customers are all about the UI and the namefad, neither of which actually do anything for people needing their computers for actual productivity -- i.e., the majority of people in the market for computers.

[litfan]

But some choose a model that doesnt suck for their customers... and some do.

Some pay more money if they can afford it, some dont. as other example.

But GPL (3) costs no money so I don?t see a big reason to not do it, except u want to enslave yourself, also u get maybe more work done from others because most people dont want that companies use their stuff to make money and getting no money out of it, or to promote nsa-spysoftware.

Yep, we have a real idiot here folks. Move along, nothing to see but a monkey flinging poo.

[blackiwid]

Every company's main care is money, regardless the license.

But some choose a model that doesnt suck for their customers... and some do.

Some pay more money if they can afford it, some dont. as other example.

But GPL (3) costs no money so I don?t see a big reason to not do it, except u want to enslave yourself, also u get maybe more work done from others because most people dont want that companies use their stuff to make money and getting no money out of it, or to promote nsa-spysoftware.

[LightBit]

Every company's main care is money, regardless the license.

[russofris]

So by your logic a company that doesn't use GPLv3 doesn't care about it's customers? Gotcha, thanks for letting us know your opinion is worthless and we can just dismiss you outright.

I think he was saying something more along the lines of: "Companies only care about their customers enough to continue taking their money, and GPL3 is perceived as a threat to this philosophy". While its nice that some of the AMD/RH/Intel guys swing by this forum from time to time, we need to remember that the business people from those companies don't give a shit about any of us beyond the transfer of our money into their wallets. As long as everyone is on the same page, I really don't have a moral objection to that.

[tebruno99]

If it would not be "opensource" microsoft could not "stolen" it, if it would be gpl they would have needed to opensource the hole windows at least the hole kernel.

^^

Thats the real difference between Linux zealot and a BSD zealot. You can't "steal" BSD. It is freely given to do WHATEVER you will.