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Re: Significance of the GP licence.
From: |
David Kastrup |
Subject: |
Re: Significance of the GP licence. |
Date: |
Tue, 04 May 2010 16:07:50 -0000 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1.92 (gnu/linux) |
Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:
> In gnu.misc.discuss David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:
>
>>> Quite simply, that it is the GPL itself which is the main reason for
>>> the popularity of Linux amongst the people who write it.
>
>> Well, that's half of the story. Linux has been written to support a
>> preexisting GNU userland. And that userland has a tradition of being
>> popular and freely available quite before Linux.
>
> What is the reason for that popularity (amongst developers), if it's not
> the GPL.
Quality. It was "traditional" for UNIX utilities to dump core when fed
random garbage. And availability. GNU utilities ran on more than just
UNIX systems.
> GPL vs. BSD license was one of the few big differences between the
> projects way back then.
Uh, not even at Linux birthtime (1991) there was a complete freely
available BSD system. But there already was a GNU userland under
DOS/Windows and some other systems. Life saver.
>> And BSD became freely available only some time after GNU/Linux.
>
> Yet how does that explain why Linux is so much more popular amongst
> developers than a BSD kernel? BSD became freely available at a very
> early stage of the development of GNU/Linux, early enough to catch up
> on its merits.
Still not with a GNU userland.
>> The GNU userland is unpopular among BSD developers because, well,
>> they are BSD developers. And because their kernel of choice already
>> comes in one package with a userland.
>
> The BSDs include some GNU stuff,
Not the normal userland. It already has one.
> just as GNU/Linux includes some BSD licensed stuff.
But there is no preexisting GNU alternative for that which it includes
BSD licensed.
>> So quite a lot of popularity of GNU/Linux comes from GNU, and not
>> necessarily just because GNU is GPLed.
>
> Would you argue that GNU would have become just as popular (amongst
> its developers), had it been licensed under something like the BSD
> licence? I would doubt that very much.
Speculative history. We won't find out.
> Well there's little prospect of that experiment taking place,
> thankfully.
Yup.
--
David Kastrup
- Re: Versa trashes the GPL as well, (continued)
- Re: Versa trashes the GPL as well, RJack, 2010/05/04
- Significance of the GP licence., Alan Mackenzie, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., RJack, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., Alan Mackenzie, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., RJack, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., David Kastrup, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., RJack, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., David Kastrup, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., Alexander Terekhov, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., Alan Mackenzie, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence.,
David Kastrup <=
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., RJack, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., David Kastrup, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., Hyman Rosen, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., RJack, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., Hyman Rosen, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., RJack, 2010/05/04
- Re: Significance of the GP licence., VICTOR TARABOLA CORTIANO, 2010/05/04
- Re: Versa trashes the GPL as well, Hyman Rosen, 2010/05/04
- Re: Versa trashes the GPL as well, RJack, 2010/05/04
- Re: Versa trashes the GPL as well, Hyman Rosen, 2010/05/04