FreeBSD Just Removed The Last Of Its GPL-Licensed Code

The upshot of the BSD-license in the case of FreeBSD is that it has found it and its components used in many commercial products, including MacOS/OS X, the PlayStation’s Orbis OS, and of course the BSD networking stack is happily used in Windows, macOS and just about anywhere else. Meanwhile the GPL forced Linksys to open the firmware to its WRT54G series of routers, ultimately leading to the development of OpenWrt and similar projects.

They make it sound like the *WRTs were the worst thing to happen to consumer networking and that corporations not being required to contribute back to projects has made BSD stronger, rather than given companies free labor. I find the *BSDs to be pretty interesting, but let’s not pretend that they’re benefiting from companies using their work. Very shilly tone to this article.

yeah I liked that bsd really kept to the unix style but license wise gpl is what I respect.

Agreed. I also want to learn more about micro kernels as well, which the BSDs use.

I think we have a pretty interesting dynamic viewing the two different licensing schemes. Linux/gnu has been making some huge strides, whereas BSD is kind of just very slowly chugging along in niche areas. It does seem to be pretty damn good at the things it does, though. I honestly feel like the BSD license should be a better license because it gives more freedom, but with the existence of greed and capitalism GPL is required to get profit seekers (greedy bastards) to play nice.

Edit: I was wrong, got it mixed up with gnu Hurd when looking things up in the past

I will add to the agreement. I wish gpl was not needed. I did not realize any bsds used micro kernels though.