[jordigh]

I wonder what kind of world we would have if GNU were completely defeated, if no one released anything under the GPL anymore. Sure, free software would still exist, but nobody would call it "free software" and no one would prevent anyone else from creating non-free derivatives. Nearly all software would be "open core", with some free software here and there but with many or most of the interesting components non-free.

We're already very close to that world. Many people seem happy to see GNU losing ground every day. For myself, I am not sure that we are working towards the best possible future, but I'm not even sure what that future should be.

[drzaiusapelord]

We used to call that "public domain software" and it was big in the 80s from what I recall (I was a kid then). You'd release something to the public domain and people can do with it whatever they wished. Then GNU came around and ate everyone's lunch, for better or worse. I suspect for better.

Maybe GNU is just a stop-gap movement to get everyone on board the FOSS train, who knows. BSD licensing hasn't caused any apocalypse yet and arguably it provided a networking stack for Windows that was superior to anything MS could rush out the door back in the NT 3.5 days. There's something nice about being able to put the code into commercial products without worrying about strict GNU/GPL-like conditions.

[krupan]

It was Microsoft that came and ate public domain software's lunch, not GNU. GNU and the GPL were not needed until aggressive copyright enforcers such as Microsoft came on the scene. Bill Gates wrote a famous rant calling anyone that shares code a thief, essentially. The GPL was a reaction to that attitude and has saved the culture of sharing code.

If most people defaulted to sharing code like was done pre-Microsoft then BSD would be fine. Read RMS's rant that is linked above. He's still at defending against "adversaries" of Freedom. This is war!

OK, so even MS is now open sourcing (some of) their code. Maybe it's not "war" anymore, but you need to understand the history a little.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

> Bill Gates wrote a famous rant calling anyone that shares code a thief, essentially. The GPL was a reaction to that attitude and has saved the culture of sharing code.

Didn't Gates' letter come out ten or more years before the first version of the GPL.

[jordigh]

Going back even further, we used to just call it "software". The idea that software could be copyrighted didn't even happen until the 1970s, and it took a while for the idea to really take hold.

This is why rms is the way he is. He's old. He remembers the days when all software was free. He's been trying to get that back ever since.