Short answer: Yes, they patent-troll large companies using Linux, and many of them roll over rather than get sued into oblivion. Patents and profiting from patents is an unrelated discussion to copyright-based licensing. Of course, GPL licenses contain clauses that actually battle software patents, whereas more "permissive" licenses do not. So, for example, a company shipping GPL'd code makes a covenant in so doing not to sue others for patents under some set of broad conditions. Microsoft used BSD code way back and was still able to sue the FLOSS community regularly, but since buying Nokia, who then shipped an Android phone (linux, GPLv2), apparently their basis for doing so in future is somewhat undermined. This is why GPL matters, why it's valuable. A permissively licensed code commons is great if we're all great people who write and share great things. But there are plenty of people out there willing to Embrace Extend Extinguish, which GPL protects against (patent clauses and copyleft) and BSD does not. On 07/01/15 08:52, Georgi Guninski wrote:
On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 01:21:22PM -0600, Dan White wrote:
On 01/06/15 19:51 +0200, Georgi Guninski wrote:
Let me make a rant on BSD vs GPL licenses.
It is well known fact that Micro$oft used *BSD TCP stack in earlier versions of their shit. In addition on _old_ versions of windows, grepping for "Berkeley" returned the bsd license in userland, likely in the shit called "ftp.exe".
I am not a coder, though have released some non-destructive stuff.
If I were a coder, I would have been pissed off if micro$oft profited from my codeZ$ (though a lot a of sheeple don't care about this).
My googlefu is failing me, but I recall that Microsoft came to some sort of agreement back in the 90s with the Regents of the University of California, meaning someone got payed.
I haven't heard of this, though it might be true. They could have done it legally without paying and BSD license in their code suggests they might have not paid enough (if any). Reference: http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2004/06/25/108820958560677845/ BSD Licensed Code in Windows Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
If I were a coder, GPL is assumed to guarantee me that shit like m$ can't profit from codeZ$.
https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+making+money+from+linux
I agree that m$ profits from linux, but this requires more legal tricks/sophistication than just legally taking the BSD code. (My guess is they profit mainly from patents, but this is another story).
-- Dan White vi, debian, C, mutt, sysvinit, /usr/local/, su -, and I dress to the right