[_delirium]

> I want the freedom BSD gives me

But from a user-centric perspective, this is not freedom but power, specifically the power to restrict downstream users' freedom. The GPL does not give you that power, while the BSD license does. That's the main philosophical difference: the GPL says you cannot add new restrictions on distribution, while the BSD says you an add any restrictions you want, as long as you don't remove the copyright notice.

[lsc]

Freedom is nearly always a matter of perspective.

Many folks, especially Americans, feel that the freedom, for example, to kick someone else off their land (or out of their living room) is pretty important, even though from the perspective of the person getting kicked off, this is a restriction of freedom.

The BSD licence is more free from the perspective of the developer, while yes, the gpl is more free from the perspective of the user.

Personally, I think it's good that we have both. "Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others."

The fact of the matter is that under at least US law, it's the programmers choice how to licence their software, and considering that a whole lot of software is not open-source at all, both the bsd licence and the gpl licence are way better for users, I think, than closed-source software.

[pjmlp]

Except that most developers working on open source are actually getting their bills paid by working on closed-source software.

That speaks it all, I think.

[lsc]

>Except that most developers working on open source are actually getting their bills paid by working on closed-source software.

Do you have references for that statement?

I was under the impression was that most, or at least a very large portion of open-source code was written by people paid by companies to work on that open-source code. Both on the BSD and GPL side of things.

[pjmlp]

Which companies and in what types of markets?

Facebook, IBM, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP are only partially open source.

Most of the stuff I see 100% open source, are companies that sell SaaS or PaaS, without giving access to their internal stuff built on top of open source. When they do, it is only a small subset of their tooling/frameworks.

[lsc]

I was taking issue with your statement "most developers working on open source are actually getting their bills paid by working on closed-source software."

That's /completely different/ from who is a 100% open-source company. Hell, you could probably call my company almost 100% open-source, but we haven't contributed a hell of a lot back.

https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/560928-counting-contri...

According to that, volunteers (people, as you said, who are probably actually paid to write closed source software, and do this on their own time.[1]) are a significant force, but not the majority. It looks like the majority of contributions come from folks paid to work on open source (and give the changes back) by some company or another. Sometimes those companies are not primarily open-source companies. Some of those companies are not software companies at all. Intel probably has the clearest incentive here; if their hardware works well under linux, well, that is going to tend to increase hardware sales.

Now, of course, the Linux kernel may or may not be representative of other open source projects, but those are the statistics I find.

This also lines up with what I've seen personally; most people I know who contribute significantly do contribute some of their own time, but most of them get paid to do it most of the time.

[1]I'm not sure your statement is true even there. Most of the major contributors I know who put in significant personal time do get paid to work on open-source stuff when they get paid. I mean, if you have a deep understanding of a valuable and commonly-used codebase, well, when looking for employment, working on said codebase is very likely the highest value use of your time.

[pjmlp]

While I agree with your remark [1], it does not pay the bills.

Fact is, most people in HN like open source, but the reality speaks otherwise when you try to make a living out of it.

I have been through it a few times, so I speak from experience.

[belorn]

In every study I have seen, your statement is incorrect.

The wast majority of developers work at internal code, code that never will get redistributed outside the company walls.

[pjmlp]

> The wast majority of developers work at internal code, code that never will get redistributed outside the company walls.

According to my dictionary this means closed source, which only reinforces my statement.

[belorn]

As the developer, I can see the source tree. The company owners can see the source tree. As such, everyone who has access to the program also has access to the source.

GPL allows this, as do every type of open/free software license. Either this mean that your word choice of "closed source" lacks meaning, or we are not talking about the same thing.

[pjmlp]

If the source is not made available to your customers it is not open source.