Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 20:36:58 -0400 From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@telenix.org> To: d@delphij.net Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: FSF v Cisco on GPL reached settlement Message-ID: <4A14A22A.8070504@telenix.org> In-Reply-To: <4A14933A.5000400@delphij.net> References: <4A14933A.5000400@delphij.net>
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Xin LI wrote: > For those who are interested: > > http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-05-cisco-settlement.html > Huh. The results of this aren't going to be what the FSF prays for, I think. I've worked for more than one company who said, basically, that they would contribute "tomorrow". They really honestly never wanted to, and were just expecting that they'd never be sued over it ... no few are in direct non-compliance, I'm sure a lot of you folks know as many companies that do this as I do, that part of this mail is no guess at all. I expect that one major fallout of this is going to be, a number of companies waking up and realizing that they maybe should quit waiting for the other shoe to drop, and take some sort of pre-emptive action. I'm sure the FSF expects that a large number of companies will just start living up to the rules, but I'm wondering if instead, a large slice of those companies are either going to buy one of the *many* reasonably priced OS alternatives, or even go for one of the BSD's (the BSD's all have some really strong companies offering a good level of support). I don't know, don't even have a guess, as to what fraction of folks will decide to go to a Linux alternative, but I think it'll be more than the FSF thinks it'll be. It's even possible that FreeBSD will itself get a user bump out of our more open license, because at least some of those companies will look, and see what's out there to be gotten. Like I said, it won't be a gigantic percentage, but more than what's expected, I think.
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