[wraptile]

I feel like MIT license will prevent this from ever becoming a linux alternative unless of course they switch to something more sane later on.

[qalmakka]

Linux didn't win because it was GPL'd, it won because it was the only real alternative back in '92. The BSDs were all caught up in the moronic SCO lawsuits of the time, otherwise we'd all be using FreeBSD or some other 386BSD variant today instead of Linux. The GPL was a nice bonus but it isn't the real secret sauce that has powered Linux's growth, it was mostly good timing.

That doesn't mean that I'd rather see some form of copyleft in place (like the MPLv2) or at least a licence with some kind of patent protection baked in (like the Apache 2.0), the X11/MIT licences are extremely weak against patent trolls

[weinzierl]

The short window of opportunity that had opened up around 1992 certainly was a precondition for Linux success.

That we have Linux as we have it today is the result of

- being under GPL

- having a large enough and diverse enough group of contributors to make re-licensing practically impossible

- no CLA, no Copyright assignment

[bigstrat2003]

There's nothing insane about MIT. It may not be your preference, but that's not the same as insane.

[wraptile]

other licenses being more sane doesn't imply MIT is _insane_ per se. It's just not a very sane option for cooperation and has a very real posibility of driving someone insane. Imagine working on redoxos for years with your friends and then Microsoft takes your work, rebrands it as Windows 19, completely steals all of the market from you and silences you through legal pressure without even crediting your work. All of this is very much possible and similar scenarios have happened before.

MIT is for education not cooperation.

[omnimus]

I am not native speaker but saying something is more sane doesn't mean the person means/thinks other option is insane (which is the extreme on the scale).

It can mean both of the options might be sane (reasonable) one is just more reasonable. It might also mean both of the options are insane (unreasonable) one is just less so.

[pjmlp]

None of the competition on the embedded space of FOSS operating systems, including Linux Foundation Zephyr, makes use of GPL.

Unfortunely the license is seen as tainted by all businesses, and plenty of OSes are already seen as Linux alternative in some spaces.

In others Android is the only being used, where the only thing left from GPL is the Linux kernel itself, and only because Fuchsia kind of went nowhere, besides some kitchen devices.