[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.