In gnu.misc.discuss RJack <user@example.net> wrote:
Alan Mackenzie wrote:
In gnu.misc.discuss RJack <user@example.net> wrote:
Once the GPL is invalidated, promissory estoppel will allow
some proprietary company to improve Linux and turn it into a
real operating system. Microsoft hates the thought that folks
will understand the GPL is unenforceable. That's the reason
Microsoft embraced the GPL -- it suppressed new competition.
Perhaps the Linux kernel will continue to be improved under a
free (free as in freedom) license such as BSD or Apache.
You still don't get it, RJ. The GPL is the most popular free
licence, and that popularity has a reason.
Working on a BSD kernal is so much less popular than working on
Linux. That has a reason, too.
Reason? So do birds. flowers and trees. So what is your point? You
are correct (for once). I don't get it. Statements usually have to
make sense. What's your rhetorical focus?
Quite simply, that it is the GPL itself which is the main reason for
the popularity of Linux amongst the people who write it. If, for
some currently inconceivable reason, Linux was relicenced under what
you call a "free as in freedom" licence, many developers would cease
development.