(Please, please don't top-post. Fixing it is a pain in the rear.) On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 11:52:24AM -0800, Fargusson.Alan wrote: > I think Apple stated that they went with FreeBSD because they don't like > the GPL. The reason that they are contributing back to FreeBSD is because > they were not getting support from OSS developers. Now they are. The GPL > may not be seen as business friendly, but it does work.
Contributing back to the community is entirely independent of whether or not the GPL is used. As you see from Apple's example, they can contribute back to the community - but *ONLY* those pieces they wish to - without being forced to. If they'd chosen a GPLed base, all of OS X would have to be open source, including those pieces that represent Apple's competitive edge. The OS X example is the perfect case of the GPL *not* working. If it worked, I'd be typing this on a Linux-based system, not one based on FreeBSD. Apple chose BSD because they wanted a base that fit their business needs. A GPLed system did not - and, I submit, never will, for any software business not based on the idea of selling services instead of products.
