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What sense is licensing operating system on BSD license? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 days ago by mlxdy@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Change my mind.

Companies are just taking BSD code and don't contribute to it. At the end they're selecting Linux even if there's licensing risk and they have contribute to code. Why? Because Linux have a lot of contributors, that makes it much more advanced system with more features. Also companies which want to support Linux don't have to worry that someone would close their code or code they funded with money. It's not about competition but collaboration. GPL license allowed us also to sell own open-source solutions.

FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD are behind Linux. I love that systems (especially OpenBSD), but I don't see a point in contributing or donating to them. Instead of being ready to use solutions they're trying to be base for commercial closed-source products and it would be great as contributors could get something from that, but they get nothing.

I understand that BSD see closed source as something cool and way to commercialize software, but in today times where a lot of devices have 24/7 access to internet, microphones, cameras and at the same time to sensitive data it's extremely dangerous. Closed source is used to hide backdoors, acts of surveillance and keeping monopoly on market which obviously stop evolution of software.

Please tell me how BSD license can be good solution for operating system. It's not about offending BSD, but as someone who love open source software I hate closed source software I would like to know how I can defend this license.

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[-] tomalley8342@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The added bonus is not having to deal with Sony, or other people, trying to upstream stuff that doesn’t make sense outside of the PS environment and would have questionable value to others.

GPL doesn't force people to merge back to upstream, and BSD doesn't have any special way to stop people from trying to upstream. The only difference is that Sony's PS6 OS fork would have been open source if it were bound by the GPL, which would be an objective benefit.

[-] jollyrogue@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Fair, the patches don’t have to be accepted. 🙂

Would it be bound by the GPL? Companies love writing shims, and the Linux kernel is pro-business. It is specifically GPLv2 to allow companies to use it in closed source applications. TiVo is the poster child for this.

Anything running in user space isn’t considered a derivative work. The kernel ABI specifically allows for this. A closed source application could run on top of the Linux kernel and not have to be released.

Applications linking to a GPL library, glibc excluded, would have to be released since that would constitute a derivative work.

I’m the PS6 scenario, we would probably get very little usable code. The GPL is old, and companies have had lots of time to work around it.

this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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