this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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In my opinion, I just don't understand permissive licenses. For example, with FreeBSD's license, companies can essentially "steal" the hard-earned efforts and use them to enrich themselves. For example, FreeBSD could have been a gaming OS, as the PlayStation's OS is FreeBSD. However, they didn't give anything back to the community.
Copyleft licenses, on the other hand, require companies to contribute any changes they make to the code back to the community so that it benefits the community as a whole. In this case, there's no "stealing", companies need to respect the community's efforts by giving back.
That's my two cents anyway.
Another way to think of it is the old "you wouldn't steal a car" commercial.
A company using BSD in their product cannot "steal" it, because we still have the BSDs. They can't take them away, so its not stealing. It just comes down to your personality and how much you value control over what they are doing with it (No shade either way from me, if its your work)
In the end, I think it matters less than it seems. Companies can use Linux via either tivoization or proprietary software on top without contributing back,, and other companies voluntarily submit patches or pay FreeBSD developers because maintaining a closed source fork is expensive.