this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
264 points (97.5% liked)
Technology
86707 readers
3408 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No, you have failed to understand how either license works. Companies are forced to contribute back in the case of the GPL and the project can choose to accept that or not. In the case of the BSD license companies can choose whether to contribute back and if they do, then the project has the option to accept it or not. The GPL makes it always the choice of the project, while the BSD makes it always the choice of the company.
You have failed to understand the difference between idealism and practice. There are more companies that use Linux without ever contributing back than those that do. Those that do do so because it makes practical business sense to improve the upstream project they rely on. Any company that has decided they don't want to share some code just builds it in a binary module, firmware, or application to sit on top.