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Will GPLv3 Drive Users from Linux to FreeBSD?
An anonymous reader writes "Last week ZDNet put up an article asking a simple question: will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD? It's based on issues raised in the August FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter. That publication features a letter by the vice president of the FreeBSD Foundation, Justin Gibbs, arguing that the GPLv3 restricts the rights of commercial users of open source software, and is just the FSF's first step in changing the GPL in ways that authors of GPL software may not have intended. He suggests that commercial users should seriously consider BSD-licensed software as an alternative if they want to be able to safely ship products in the future. This is especially in light of requirements from the FCC that software running on devices (such as software-defined radios) be end-user replaceable. Gibbs states that the FreeBSD Foundation will provide an alternative to GPLv3'd software, especially in light of Stallman's statement that further GPL revisions are due in the near future. Is this likely to cause discontent among Linux users, or will they mostly ignore it?"
I am interested in finding out software that is used for such purposes which will be licensed under the new GPLv3 and which companies are effected.
I am looking forward to your reply.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Sorry, you've got it wrong. The "work" is the software, not the physical device as a whole. You can have multiple software "works" (potentially with different licensing) that are aggregated on the physical device as a whole. This is why the whole "mere aggregation" clause exists in the GPL.
Yeah, I always find this debate pointless on its face. BSD uses huge amounts of GPL-licensed software, so there's no substantial difference. In fact, BSD will be using GPLv3-licensed software, unless they intend on taking over their own fork of GCC (a monumental task which would substantially harm their ability to support BSD itself).
I also suspect that you'll see a fair amount of Gnome and KDE packages (though I don't know about the core of those two projects, and how they'll proceed) use the GPLv3.
Linux and BSD OSes will continue to use much of each other's code, and things like the file utilities will become less and less important. Eventually, I expect that you'll find Linux and BSD essentially differing on nothing more than how their distributions are structured and their kernels. The idea that their different licenses have a substantial impact on the end-user OS is rather myopic at best.
The only GNU tools in any of the BSDs are the compiler toolchain. None of the standard unix utilities are the GNU versions like they are in most (all?) linux distros. Everything from ls, to grep to diff/patch to inetd is BSD licensed in the BSDs.
Well, there's a lot of different reasoning behind the GPL. One reason for the GPL is that to have you return to the community modifications and improvements that you make to code you receive from the community. Another reason behind the GPL, though, is to allow people who receive code from you (that you based on code received from the community) to *modify* the code. When the GPLv2 was written, the thinking was that requiring you to share the code would automatically allow people to make modifications to it.
Tivo found a way around it that stuck to the letter of the GPL but violated the spirit of the agreement. Certainly if you read what RMS has written about his philosophy about software the ability to change and modify software that you get is a keep part of his philosophy.
Rightly or wrongly the Free Software Foundation is not about making software that businesses can use to make money. It's about making software that people can share and modify freely. If you're a business and you want to use code that comes under the GPL you should be prepared to go along with what the community expects. If not, go find code that is licensed differently, like under BSD, or hey, consider *investing* some money in the software so that you can do whatever you like with it and license it however you like.
TiVO likely uses some utilities and libraries from the GNU Project, such as glibc and coreutils, and when GNU switches to GPL3, they won't be able to make use of future versions or patches from that source.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.