Journal SimianOverlord's Journal: The BSD style license is an abject failure 5
The only thing preventing me from trying out one of the BSD's is (leaving poor hardware support aside) my theological problems with the BSD license.
The thing that always makes me chuckle at BSD zealots of any flavour is their frantic clinging to the absurd notion that the BSD license is somehow purer, freer and more useful than the GPL (Gnu Protective License).
Let's take a step back and assess the purpose of the BSD style license in a civilised and open-minded manner. The main purpose of the BSD style license is to freely share the benefits of a coders work among whoever wants it, while allowing this "taker" any rights to repackage and sell the work, as long as he/she/it credits the original author correctly.
What was the purpose of creating this license? It was to give freely to large corporations, in the hope that they, seeing the benefits, would be filled with a sense of generosity and thus help support BSD projects with gifts of hardware and technical expertise that the BSD pastime need so desperately.
If you actually look at what is happening now, as I write these words, this has not come to pass. The supposition of the original authors of the BSD license has been shown for the wooly minded nonsense it is. To believe large corporations would act in any way benevolent, rather than looking to the shareholders bottom line, is the worst kind of wishful thinking which grew popular in the peace movement of the 60's when the BSD license was created. This paradigm simply doesn't fit into the modern world as we know it.
Is it any wonder then that increasingly BSDs are relying on donations from an echochamber of rapidly dwindling numbers of zealots? The dream of corporate back scratching in return for free code is a sham. This is why I cannot use BSD. The fundamental license precepts are not based on reality as we know it.
The thing that always makes me chuckle at BSD zealots of any flavour is their frantic clinging to the absurd notion that the BSD license is somehow purer, freer and more useful than the GPL (Gnu Protective License).
Let's take a step back and assess the purpose of the BSD style license in a civilised and open-minded manner. The main purpose of the BSD style license is to freely share the benefits of a coders work among whoever wants it, while allowing this "taker" any rights to repackage and sell the work, as long as he/she/it credits the original author correctly.
What was the purpose of creating this license? It was to give freely to large corporations, in the hope that they, seeing the benefits, would be filled with a sense of generosity and thus help support BSD projects with gifts of hardware and technical expertise that the BSD pastime need so desperately.
If you actually look at what is happening now, as I write these words, this has not come to pass. The supposition of the original authors of the BSD license has been shown for the wooly minded nonsense it is. To believe large corporations would act in any way benevolent, rather than looking to the shareholders bottom line, is the worst kind of wishful thinking which grew popular in the peace movement of the 60's when the BSD license was created. This paradigm simply doesn't fit into the modern world as we know it.
Is it any wonder then that increasingly BSDs are relying on donations from an echochamber of rapidly dwindling numbers of zealots? The dream of corporate back scratching in return for free code is a sham. This is why I cannot use BSD. The fundamental license precepts are not based on reality as we know it.
OpenBSD seems to be doing ok (Score:2)
Their latest release was 2004-10, and they're not begging for donations.
It's interesting enough to make me want to play around with it.Interestingly (Score:1)
I muck about with OpenBSD myself from time to time.
Re:Interestingly (Score:2)
<tinfoilhat>
</tinfoilhat>So what was the final outcome?
Nothing (Score:1)
Re:Nothing (Score:2)