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by isx726552 17 days ago
*BSD is dying! You don’t have to be Kreshkin…

But seriously, if one counts macOS and iOS as FreeBSD users, there are more than ever. Of course that means counting Android and Steam as Linux OSes, in which case Linux users still greatly outnumber FreeBSD users.
1 comments
bigfishrunning 17 days ago
FreeBSD's license means it shows up in a lot of unexpected places -- the last two Sony Playstations run a FreeBSD derived OS for instance. It's around, more then you think, but it's very quiet...
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rbanffy 17 days ago
One of the reasons it’s very quiet is that you can only do what the company that provided it to you allows you to do with it. You can’t reinstall a fork of PlayStation OS, for instance. Sony won’t provide you the sources and the changes they made. If it was a GPLv3 OS, they would provide everything you need to build your own PlayStation OS.
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bigfishrunning 17 days ago
If it were a GPLv3 OS, it's likely that they would have chosen something else.
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JackSlateur 17 days ago
Would that have been a bad thing ? Between a proprietary OS on which we cannot do anything and an opensource-based OS on which we cannot do anything .. I'd argue that making the company paying the bill would be more healthy
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bigfishrunning 16 days ago
The two arguments against that

1) People writing BSD licensed software want people to use it, and don't really care about any reciprocal contribution (or else they would write copyleft-licensed software)

2) "the company" never pays the bill. It is always passed to their customers in one way or another.

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JackSlateur 16 days ago
Yes

If we think a bit more, that may help the customers: companies like Sony would have to choice between either implement their own OS (increased cost, increase end product prices) or use opensource software

The topic would become a competitive (dis)advantage, not just a random topic for legal people

My take is that BSD-like licences are bad for humankind, but as a short-sighted person with no impact whatsover, it does not matter

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rbanffy 16 days ago
> don't really care about any reciprocal contribution (or else they would write copyleft-licensed software)

Also don’t care about their users having the same rights they enjoyed getting software written by someone else (for free!) and making some changes before their customers could pay to use it.

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throw0101d 17 days ago
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Free...
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