this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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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.
You are very shrilly yourself. Plenty of companies have shown it isn't hard to take GPL without contributed back. There are high odds you are using a chrome based browser to read this - did you know that is a GPL project because once upon a time it was khtml (from the KDE project), but the changes were never contributed back. Many embedded companies have their own fork of linux as well - their changes are all available as the GPL requires, but the changes won't be accepted to the kernel as is and so the fact that they are available is useless.
Meanwhile there are many companies using FreeBSD who choose to contribute their changes back, just like some companies choose to contribute back to various GPL projects they use.
So your argument is that because there are some exceptions to a rule, the opposite of that rule is true.
Basically his argument is that because some companies choose to contribute back to BSD projects even though they aren't required to, and because some GPL projects choose not to merge some changes from downstream forks, the GPL and BSD licenses are effectively the same. I think the flaw in this logic should be pretty apparent. I think the GPLv2 vs. GPLv3 debate is a lot more interesting, particularly since Linus has come out against GPLv3.
Another way to phrase that is that companies can choose to meaningulfully contribute back, or not, with either project, and there are plenty of examples of each combination.
Rocks are woke now.
Yeah, since rocks went all woke and stuff, they have really been rolling down hill...
My sediments exactly
Honestly this is magnificent. 🤡
No, you have failed to understand how either license works. Companies are forced to contribute back in the case of the GPL and the project can choose to accept that or not. In the case of the BSD license companies can choose whether to contribute back and if they do, then the project has the option to accept it or not. The GPL makes it always the choice of the project, while the BSD makes it always the choice of the company.
You have failed to understand the difference between idealism and practice. There are more companies that use Linux without ever contributing back than those that do. Those that do do so because it makes practical business sense to improve the upstream project they rely on. Any company that has decided they don't want to share some code just builds it in a binary module, firmware, or application to sit on top.