On 2011-04-14 21:12:35 +0200, Marc Balmer wrote: > Am 14.04.11 20:54, schrieb Ken Hornstein: > > Can we all respectfully agree to disagree on the issue of licenses? > > The *BSDs use a BSD-style license, Linux uses the GPL. Both have > > their advantages and disadvantages, and your license preference depends > > on your worldview (indeed, what you consider an advantage versus a > > disadvantage depends on your worldview). > > > > Also, I would note that the soekris mailing list is not the appropriate > > place to hash out the merits of licenses; there are better places > > for that discussion. > > Keep in mind that the OP asked why some folks favor A over B. And > license X vs. license Y is a perfectly valid response. > > There is no judgment in the licenses themselves, just *why* one is > prefererred *by someone* for a *specific application*.
I'm still wondering what the application may be where the license of the
OS may actually make a difference.
I use soekris boxes as router/firewall thingies for our own organisation
and customers. So far I've not run into a situation where the license
would have made a difference. I have done a bit of custom programming,
but just because the kernel is GPL doesn't mean that the applications
running on it have to be GPL (as a lot of commercial software vendors
writing software for Linux can testify) - and most of my programs were
in Perl, so the customer got the source anyway.
Sure, if I need to modify some GPL code, I have to give those
modifications to the customer, but that doesn't seem very likely: Even
if I was a hardware vendor who sold soekris boxes with custom PCI cards
and proprietary drivers I could get by with providing binary-only
drivers (if Nvidia and EMC can do it ...).
So, apart from philosophical reasons (which I can understand): What do
you really do with your soekris boxes what the Linux license(s) would
prevent you from doing?
I'm really just curious, not trying to escalate the flame war.
hp
--
_ | Peter J. Holzer | Auf jedem Computer sollte der Satz Ludwigs II
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR | eingeprägt stehen: "Ein ewig Rätsel will ich
| | | [email protected] | bleiben, mir und andern."
__/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Wolfram Heinrich in desd
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