[jepper]

Yet Linux is way more popular option both on the server and the desktop. Way way way more people and companies contribute. And it seems that BSD use is declining on servers? [1] MacOs is a unix but how does that help the BSD community, as most code is build upon it and the changes don't really trickle back. Companies just take, if you can do whatever you want with the code. You can wish that everybody shared back in a perfect world, reality proves this is simply not true. At least the company trying to influence development has to contribute to gain influence, and you can fork it (with their changes!) if you don't like that.

The GNU license at least somewhat protective. To each their own, but I would never release software under a permissive free license.

[1] https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd

[forgotpwd16]

>Yet Linux is way more popular option both on the server and the desktop.

On servers licensing isn't that important as you don't have to share any modifications. Licensing plays role on deployment where you may or may not have to share source code.

>MacOs is a unix but how does that help the BSD community

As counter-argument Sony used FreeBSD as basis to their PS3/4/5 OS and they've sent a number of patches upstream.