[linguae]

I agree, though I feel compelled to post that the BSDs learned their lesson about the use of the UNIX trademark the hard way. Part of what caused the classic lawsuit between the Regents of the University of California (the "Berkeley" in Berkeley Software Distribution) and AT&T was the fact that a spinoff company selling BSD had the phone number 1-800-ITS-UNIX:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.....

This lawsuit happened (1992-1994) when Linux was in its infancy (Linus Torvalds started work on Linux in 1991). Had the future of BSD not been so uncertain during this lawsuit, it is quite possible that some derivative of BSD would be the dominant FOSS operating system today instead of Linux.

[deafpolygon]

Linux's dominance might still have emerged due to the individuals behind it. Beyond Torvalds' work on the kernel, Richard Stallman and others had a significant influence in shaping its early trajectory. Their philosophies and actions were key in driving the open-source movement forward.

The BSD license, while appealing to corporations due to its permissive nature, allows proprietary entities to incorporate the code into their products without giving back to the community. This has happened multiple times, with examples like Apple's Darwin, NetApp, QNAP, and Sony's PlayStation systems.

The GPL, on the other hand, attracted early contributors because it ensured that their work would remain open and shared with the world, rather than being exploited for profit.