[jason_oster]

You're putting a lot of responsibility on a license that has several permissive contemporaries. The original BSD license "Net/1" and GPL 1.0 were both published in 1989, while the MIT license has its roots set in "probably 1987" [1] with the release of X11.

No doubt, GPL had some influence. But I would hardly single it out as the force that ensured software stayed open. Software stayed open because "information wants to be free" [2], not because some authors wield copyright law like a weapon to be used against corporations.

[1]: https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license

[2]: A popular phase based on a fundamental idea that predates software.

[Decabytes]

The existence of permissive licenses like BSD or MIT does not show that copyleft was unimportant.Those licenses allowed code to remain open, but they also allowed it to be absorbed into proprietary products.

The GPL’s significance was that it changed the default outcome. At a time when software was overwhelmingly proprietary, it created a mechanism that required improvements to remain available to users and developers downstream.

Gcc was a massive deal for the reasons why compilers are free now today for example

[jason_oster]

I did not say it was unimportant. I said it was not the only important factor.

[mzi]

GPL was a response to Symbolics incorporating public domain into their software without giving back to the community (and Lisp Machines).

[cheesecompiler]

I’m not saying it’s the only force. But if it wasn’t instrumental what’s your take on the cause of proprietary software dominating until relatively recently?

[jason_oster]

You certainly made the case that the GPL was the only force, or at least ignored the contribution of alternative licenses.

I also wouldn't agree that proprietary software is in decline. There are niches where the OS, mobile apps, and games are almost entirely proprietary (and that is not changing any time soon). But the most damning problem is that all computer hardware now has multiple layers of subsystems with proprietary software components, even if the boot loader and beyond are ostensibly FOSS.

My take on the cause of proprietary software is "the bottom line". Companies want to sell products and they believe that it's easier to sell things that are not open source. Meanwhile, there are several counterexamples of commercial products that are also open source (not necessarily copyleft), including computer games. The cause of whatever decline you're seeing in proprietary software dominance is unlikely to be the GPL.

[cheesecompiler]

> You certainly made the case that the GPL was the only force

Nope.

[randallsquared]

The vast majority of running instances of operating systems are Linux or BSD. I don't think proprietary software has dominated for 15-20 years.

The two places it has won out thus far is in retail and SaaS. The environment of 1980 when most important software was locked behind proprietary licenses is quite far behind us.

[cheesecompiler]

Since Linux is GPL this seems to support my point.

[littlestymaar]

Linux won against the multiple proprietary Unixes because it forced corporations to contribute back instead of keeping their secret sauce for themselves.

[PunchyHamster]

And same corporations are now pushing BSD license at every avenue just to avoid having to do that.

[jason_oster]

This confuses the economics of open source. It's easier to contribute changes upstream than maintaining a fork. A smart business decision is using permissively licensed software that is maintained by other teams (low maintenance cost) while contributing patches upstream when the need arises (low feature cost).

Bringing a fork in-house and falling behind on maintenance is a very bad idea. The closest I've ever come to that in industry was deploying a patch before the PR was merged.

[littlestymaar]

Proprietary Unixes were literally that at the scale of an entire OS.

[waffletower]

The downvotes on the above post are telling -- the GPL Bolsheviks are girding their loins. Myself, I am nostalgic for "information wants to be free" and find the Bolsheviks to embody a horseshoe alternative form of fascism who, somehow without cognizance of the irony, attempt to redefine the meaning of freedom.