Re: [TCLUG:17728] Motif has gone opensource!

[Mike Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

> Luke Francl wrote:
>
> This, in general, prevents a company from using code to their own
> advantage and not contributing back to the community. Which *can* happen
> with BSD-style licenses. Examples are endless: Solaris, the Strongarm web
> server, I believe even Windows contains BSD code (ping, etc)! These
> companies give nothing back, and that sucks.

I remember that OS/2 used a port of the BSD TCP/IP stack.  I wouldn't
have really noticed, except that the man pages under Linux were exactly
the same as the help files that came with OS/2 (Linux used the BSD
TCP/IP stack for a while too).  Actually, IIRC, the documentation for
some of the OS/2 network utilities was lacking, and I gained more info
using the Linux man pages for those same tools..

I don't particularly like the fact that the BSD license allows someone
to take your code, extend it, and not release any of those changes back
to the public.  However, it is very possible that TCP/IP and the
Internet itself may not have become quite as popular as they are without
that license.  I have no idea how corporations would have reacted to a
more GPL-like license.  Some would have been happy to release their
code, and others probably would have stayed far away.

-- 
 _  _  _  _ _  ___    _ _  _  ___ _ _  __   #define ENONSEQUETOR
/ \/ \(_)| ' // ._\  / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__   /* C Program not derived  
\_||_/|_||_|_\\___/  \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __)  from `Hello World' */ 
[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088@tc.umn.edu ]