License selection for free software

[Paul Boddie]

On 7 Mai, 19:57, Carl Banks <pavlovevide... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That IBM and other companies are involved with Linux is an example of
> companies that are willing to get involved with GPL; it says nothing
> about whether those companies would be more, less, or un- willing to
> also get involved with more permissive licenses.

Sure, but you have to wonder why IBM invested so heavily in Linux when
there were at least three different free and mature variants of BSD
"Unix" that certain parties regarded more favourably for commercial
usage at that time. It's possible to claim now that Linux is more
attractive than a number of permissively licensed solutions for
reasons of familiarity and community size, not licensing, but that may
not have been a compelling case back when IBM decided to invest in
Linux.

> IBM is also involved with Apache, which does have a permissive
> license.

I've seen other companies using Apache, too, but I've been far from
impressed by their enhancements (which have been proprietary, if I
recall correctly). One could argue that such companies see little
point in contributing their work to the community, perhaps fearing the
supposed advantage that their enhancements bring, yet simultaneously
fail to take advantage of the improvements the community can provide.

Paul