> Probably the most extreme example of this is iOS. Apple put a slick UI on BSD and now it runs on a billion zero-freedom devices while BSD is slowly dying.
This is a very incorrect association to make, as the existence of iOS has very little effect on the relevance of BSD. (Besides, Netcraft confirmed *BSD was dying long before iOS came out. :)
Sure, from the perspective of 20-30 years ago, there were dozens of proprietary forks of BSD Unix (including NextStep), and BSD looked like a lousy choice for open source distribution.
However that doesn't acknowledge the profound change internet distribution has had on how developers consume open source code. There is now a massive ecosystem of BSD/MIT/Apache licensed code and very few evil corporations sucking it up and turning it proprietary. (Much of this 'framework' code which was always problematic under GPL.) So we should acknowledge that BSD-style licenses are successful in their own right, and not keep relying on outdated FUD about Microsoft or Apple "stealing" code twenty-five years ago, because it largely is no longer happening.
> This is a very incorrect association to make, as the existence of iOS has very little effect on the relevance of BSD.
Certainly Mac OS X has more relevance to the traditional BSD userbase than iOS, but that's because iOS preempted the existence of a mobile BSD userbase. Linux has not only Android but also a slew of smaller players like FirefoxOS and Tizen. BSD has nothing. It's hard to have less relevance than non-existence.
> (Besides, Netcraft confirmed * BSD was dying long before iOS came out. :)
Of course it was -- it has been under the BSD license the whole time and before Apple it was Sun et al as you note.
> However that doesn't acknowledge the profound change internet distribution has had on how developers consume open source code. There is now a massive ecosystem of BSD/MIT/Apache licensed code and very few evil corporations sucking it up and turning it proprietary.
That is almost a self-refuting statement. The primary reason to want a permissive license over the GPL is to use the code in proprietary software. In some cases that does result in the proprietary software dominating the open source equivalent in the market (as with OS X or Safari/Chrome), and the remaining cases (the framework code you mentioned) are the exact use case for the LGPL, which allows the framework to be used in proprietary software without allowing the framework itself to be supplanted by a proprietary fork.
> iOS preempted the existence of a mobile BSD userbase
It's completely ridiculous to claim there anything like a "mobile BSD userbase", and zero arguments beyond that were given. There's no real reason why Android or any other mobile OS couldn't be based on a BSD. Given the IP constraints of mobile phones, it probably would be a better choice than a bastardized Linux.
Oh, and "*BSD is dying" is a troll. HAND.
> The primary reason to want a permissive license over the GPL is to use the code in proprietary software.
The facts are that other than primordial forks of BSD Unix (e.g. iOS), 99% of the permissive ecosystem remains non-proprietary.
It's not like people are coding against "Ruby on Rails Professional" or "Angular.js Enterprise-Edition", all of this software is open and commoditized and free, and always will be.
> exact use case for the LGPL
I don't understand why BSD-style is much more popular than LGPL for 'frameworks'. Perhaps because it's because it's the "Lesser" GPL and the first link on the page is "Why you shouldn't use [this]".[1]
In the software industry, the FSF actually has a lot of moral authority. My guess is that if it doesn't look like they'll stand behind the LGPL, why bother?
That Apple has a huge amount of mindshare but nobody realizes how much of OSX is based on BSD/FreeBSD is a problem.
The license is a success in the sense that the code is being used, but it's failed to protect the project/brand from a situation where their code is being used worldwide without anybody realizing it.
Somebody should tell Apple to change their docs then:
> Darwin 1.4.1 is the UNIX-based, open-source foundation of Mac OS X. It is based on FreeBSD and Mach 3.0 technologies and provides protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. This release corresponds to the release of Mac OS X 10.1.https://support.apple.com/kb/TA25634?locale=en_US
Perhaps it depends on how you distribute "vanilla" across the "or"? I read it as "(vanilla BSD) or FreeBSD" but perhaps you meant "vanilla BSD or vanilla FreeBSD"
I don't agree that 'the people that matter know' is necessarily accurate, I also don't think it's sufficient. FreeBSD depends on donations and people donate for a mix of reasons. For example you can successfully brag about donating to "Linux" because even in non-tech circles people know Linux is cool. But even in tech circles people don't know much about FreeBSD.
Not that donations as a from of conspicuous social responsibility makes sense from a rational point of view, but we're humans and there are many situations where we spend money just so people see us do it.
No, I'm really just talking about common dumb statements you see on tech sites like "Mac OS X is just *BSD with a pretty GUI". When in reality they've been maintaining their own fork for almost 20 years now, for serious technical reasons.
Keep in mind that both BSD Unix and CMU/Mach were funded by the government in order to advance the state of the domestic computer industry. In terms of successful government research projects, these two would have near top of the list!
That being said, it would be great if "FreeBSD" had a bigger brand (and perhaps wasn't seen as Apple's vassal.) But I think that has more to do with the fact that Linux effectively beat them to market versus any license logic.
This is a very incorrect association to make, as the existence of iOS has very little effect on the relevance of BSD. (Besides, Netcraft confirmed *BSD was dying long before iOS came out. :)
Sure, from the perspective of 20-30 years ago, there were dozens of proprietary forks of BSD Unix (including NextStep), and BSD looked like a lousy choice for open source distribution.
However that doesn't acknowledge the profound change internet distribution has had on how developers consume open source code. There is now a massive ecosystem of BSD/MIT/Apache licensed code and very few evil corporations sucking it up and turning it proprietary. (Much of this 'framework' code which was always problematic under GPL.) So we should acknowledge that BSD-style licenses are successful in their own right, and not keep relying on outdated FUD about Microsoft or Apple "stealing" code twenty-five years ago, because it largely is no longer happening.