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Comment by Rochus | Hacker News Reader

> But we've paid a high price.

What price?

Everyone using BSD and Apache licenses - so any changes or improvements they make aren't contributed back to the source repo.

Well, there are also many who want to contribute code back to GPL and LGPL projects, but can't because the companies that control these projects want them to sign contributor agreements with unacceptable terms.

According to GPL, you do not need to contribute back to the original authors, you only need to make your changes available under GPL.

But maintaining a fork is not everyone's cup of tea.

> But maintaining a fork is not everyone's cup of tea.

It is not in the interest or benefit of the community if everyone makes or is forced to make his/her own fork. Forces should be joined, not scattered.

Probably a big reason why Linux is successful in attracting contributions; the distributed copyright means that there's nobody more equal among equals that has the sole right to monetize it however they see fit. Everybody gets the same deal.

Have a look at PostgreSQL, SQLite, LLVM, Clang ... all these are projects that get a lot of support from proprietary software vendors. I'm pretty sure that the companies contribute to these projects because of the liberal license, not in spite of it.

I think a big fallacy with regard to the GPL is that companies don't contribute to open source because the license forces them to. Companies contribute to open source because it makes more sense to collaborate on some projects rather than each work on their own.

Licenses like GPL etc. are great for ensuring their user's freedom; but they don't really incentivise companies to contribute to them at all. Instead, they prevent some companies from using them. So counter-intuitively project with liberal licenses end up with much more contributions than projects with strong licenses...

Counter argument: the Linux kernel. (Since we are mentioning open source projects with the highest profile on earth, I don't think neither of the examples are fair)

I agree, the Linux kernel is one of the examples where the GPL really works, because a lot of companies really need it for their products, and they need to distribute it, and there are very few alternatives.

> there are very few alternatives

QNX, WxWorks, Windows Embedded, Windows CE (RIP), NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, OS/2 Warp, Plan 9, Inferno, RiscOS, ReactOS...

It's a shame what happened to BeOS - I wonder what would have happened if BeOS was open-sourced when the expected Apple buyout fizzled and the company went-under instead of it simply disappearing - that would have put a huge damper on, say, Ubuntu and other Linux desktop projects because the whole selling-point of them being "the only usable desktop alternative to Windows on non-Apple hardware!" wouldn't be true.

I doubt that any of these (except maybe one of the BSDs) would be a viable alternative in most cases where companies use the Linux kernel.

See my other comment in this thread for my answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25896907

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