Comment Re: GPL is software herpes (Score 1) 89
The point, which you seemed to have missed entirely, is that regardless of what you're running and what I'm running, the world is running rather a lot of Linux and Unix on all kinds of hardware, and it's often under the hood so it's not readily obvious which is in play.
Besides using fingerprinting for networked devices, mostly the information on what's being used is out there anyway. BSDs used to be massively popular because they were what ran on what you had when you had pretty much anything. Now that's Linux, some version of it anyway. And if anyone really cares, they can dust off those old architectures on some kernel version.
The BSD license was favorable enough in its time, and it led BSD to significant success. But it didn't protect the people and corporations willing to give away the most code, which is why Linux dominated. Now it enjoys network effects. Why would I not want things to work as much the same as possible on everything I need to work with? Especially since it runs on everything.
Yes, there is still BSD out there, but there's very little reason for someone to use it as the basis of a product except wanting the option to abuse their user base. Apple went with NeXTStep not just because of The Jobs, but also because of the appeal of the license. It matches walled gardens.