this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
59 points (96.8% liked)

Technology

86649 readers
2613 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
59
FreeBSD Just Removed The Last Of Its GPL-Licensed Code (hackaday.com)
submitted 4 hours ago by 0x0@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world
14 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] cenzorrll@piefed.ca 38 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (4 children)

The upshot of the BSD-license in the case of FreeBSD is that it has found it and its components used in many commercial products, including MacOS/OS X, the PlayStation’s Orbis OS, and of course the BSD networking stack is happily used in Windows, macOS and just about anywhere else. Meanwhile the GPL forced Linksys to open the firmware to its WRT54G series of routers, ultimately leading to the development of OpenWrt and similar projects.

They make it sound like the *WRTs were the worst thing to happen to consumer networking and that corporations not being required to contribute back to projects has made BSD stronger, rather than given companies free labor. I find the *BSDs to be pretty interesting, but let's not pretend that they're benefiting from companies using their work. Very shilly tone to this article.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 10 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

So this sounds like a bad thing then...

Like if having gpl code in free bsd forced all these companies to be more open with their software, and now they can be more closed with it, isn't that bad?

[–] cenzorrll@piefed.ca 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 40 minutes ago) (1 children)

It allows freebsd to be true to the BSD license, and I agree with the author that it makes licensing easier. BSD will always be free and incredibly permissive, and I don't see this changing anything. But a lot of the strides that linux has made is because people need to release their changes.

BSD on the other hand doesn't require giving back, so you get Apple that was the largest company in the world building off of the work of FreeBSD. I certainly don't see FreeBSD being comparable to macOS like Fedora is to RHEL. It's more like Apple took what they wanted and walked away.

[–] candyman337@piefed.ca 4 points 1 hour ago

Yes that's probably bad

[–] RejZoR@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

WRT54G were the best shit back then. So much choice with firmware, loved the Tomato firmware and its flexible QoS. Good times.

[–] Thwompthwomp@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

I bought a linksys wrt simply because they had the open firmware. That router was amazing!

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

yeah I liked that bsd really kept to the unix style but license wise gpl is what I respect.

[–] cenzorrll@piefed.ca 1 points 28 minutes ago* (last edited 28 minutes ago)

Agreed. I also want to learn more about micro kernels as well, which the BSDs use.

I think we have a pretty interesting dynamic viewing the two different licensing schemes. Linux/gnu has been making some huge strides, whereas BSD is kind of just very slowly chugging along in niche areas. It does seem to be pretty damn good at the things it does, though. I honestly feel like the BSD license should be a better license because it gives more freedom, but with the existence of greed and capitalism GPL is required to get profit seekers (greedy bastards) to play nice.