Justin Krejci wrote: > > > Is it really abuse? Is there an expectation that they give something back? And > actually they technically are giving something back: their product/service is > probably better because of the free access to free quality code. They might > not be "giving" their product/service for free but just because Ford doesn't > give me their cars doesn't mean the community is worse off because they sell > their cars. (the specific anaoloy of cars is arguable on enviro and other > points, its just a hypothetical example). > > If Microsoft is (or maybe its now "was") using BSD derived networking code, > don't you think their networking code is probably better off and less likely > to be vulnerable thus making the internet and websites and internet services > you use that are running on or dependent on windows more reliable? You win, > they win, we all win. :) As I said, this is just my opinion. If you don't like my opinions, then please don't bother to read them, because I have zero time for flamewars. The only reason I'm responding now is because I feel that this is a legitimate discussion of licensing. "Free" or not doesn't really enter into what I was referring to. People seem to have this locked on mindset that FOSS software means without charge. That's rediculous! Free means free access to code - not a free ride. I don't feel that it's right for someone to take another's work that they probably did on a pro-bono basis, and don't give them any credit. Then they charge the same amount or even more than they did before - after lowering developer costs by using BSD code. Incorporating tested and true BSD code DOES make some small portion better, granted. But only if the rest of it isn't crappy to begin with. As for Microsoft making the Internet safer by incorporating BSD into their systems - we both know Justin, for a fact, that in theory that works very well. In practice, pretty much every UNIX admin agrees that Microsoft wouldn't know a secure operating system if it came up and bit them. But corporate America giving something back in better services - you must be joking. They only thing the majority of them really care about is their profit margin. The only non-FOSS companies I've seen give anything back in recent memory are the companies forced to by the GPL and similar reciprocal OSS licenses. There are exceptions, of course. Sun Microsystems being one (having gone pretty much all OSS), primarily because they realized that sharing is a good idea. They didn't have to release Java - but they did - mostly due to external pressure. The only mainstream desktop OS competitor that has truly benefited from the BSD license is probably Apple, and primarily because they can't get a respectable number of developers to write software for their systems unless they fall back on the BSD POSIX codebase. I find it ironic that Apple uses the BSD license - granted, one of the first and best of the OSS licenses, and then ignores the entire community so badly that the OpenDarwin Project just gave up and closed down. Apple and a majority of (but not all) the other companies that use the BSD really don't seem to be interesting in fostering community development and improvement - which is what the intent of the BSD license, to create a contributed stable pool of software for everyone to use - without licensing shackles. Seems to me that the only people who have done that are the folks who believe in the BSD license. Everyone else (non-OSS) just takes their code, and runs with it. Well, I've said my 10 cents.