@glyph Yes: it's why Linux got massively popular quickly,...

@glyph
Yes: it's why Linux got massively popular quickly, with open source contributions from notable large-corps, while BSD derivatives just spawned proprietary forks
@mcc

Like 3 April at 21:50 | Wall-to-wall | Open on social.coop

7 comments

Glyph

@chrisjrn @mcc Is there a good history of this somewhere? My impression of this process is that it was way more complicated than that, particularly that it had way more to do with process than licensing. But I would certainly love to be wrong about this

3 April at 22:11 | Open on mastodon.social

mcc

@glyph @chrisjrn I do think there were some other complications pushing people away from serious use of BSD during this time. But I think Christopher's argument could be made convincingly.

3 April at 22:12 | Open on mastodon.social

Christopher Neugebauer

@mcc
The fact that those complications were overcome (eventually) suggests that with the right early adoption and contribution patterns they could have been overcome (expediently), but _something_ got in the way of people wanting to contribute 🤔
@glyph

3 April at 22:19 | Open on social.coop

mcc

@chrisjrn @glyph Well, the "complications" I'm referring to were the lawsuit, and the extremely awkward "advertising" clause in the BSD license that was not removed until 1999. Those things were just going to happen over a certain time period either way (you could maybe even argue without Linux blowing up the advertising clause might have stayed in BSD longer…)

3 April at 22:25 | Open on mastodon.social

Christopher Neugebauer replied to mcc

@mcc
Fair assessment. Certainly those affected community BSD forks, but I find myself wondering how that threat would have impacted IBM (who were distributing BSD-compatible AIX and still contributing to Linux at the same time).
@glyph

3 April at 22:36 | Open on social.coop

Christopher Neugebauer

@glyph
I'd need to go looking for sources, but my recollection was that Linus was convinced to change licenses from something hand-spun to GPLv2 very early in the process, because legally unsound licensing was a barrier to contribution.

Process was a differentiator, but FreeBSD took a similar process approach and got a headstart from a more technically mature initial codebase.
@mcc

3 April at 22:14 | Open on social.coop

Christopher Neugebauer

@glyph
Wikipedia's source is in Finnish, published by the Finnish Karl Marx Society (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux), but pre-GPL, Linux used a copyleftish noncommercial licence.
@mcc

3 April at 22:17 | Open on social.coop