From owner-freebsd-chat Thu May 31 21:47:36 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtpe.ha-net.ptd.net (smtpe.ha-net.ptd.net [207.44.96.85]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 501F537B422 for ; Thu, 31 May 2001 21:47:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tms2@mail.ptd.net) Received: (qmail 25580 invoked from network); 1 Jun 2001 04:47:31 -0000 Received: from mail1.ha-net.ptd.net (HELO mail.ptd.net) ([207.44.96.65]) (envelope-sender ) by smtpe.ha-net.ptd.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 1 Jun 2001 04:47:31 -0000 Received: (qmail 15449 invoked from network); 1 Jun 2001 04:47:29 -0000 Received: from du03.cli.ptd.net (HELO mail.ptd.net) ([204.186.33.3]) (envelope-sender ) by mail.ptd.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 1 Jun 2001 04:47:29 -0000 Message-ID: <3B171E17.348C44E5@mail.ptd.net> Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 00:46:15 -0400 From: "Thomas M. Sommers" Organization: None X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The desktop apathy? I think not. References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org "Jeremy C. Reed" wrote: > > On Thu, 31 May 2001, Thomas M. Sommers wrote: > > > Had gcc been under a BSD license, it would have been just as deadly. > > Sure, a company could have made proprietary changes to it, and tried to > > sell it, but who would buy it? Or, to put it another way, how much > > could they have charged for it and still sell some? The fate of BSDi > > shows how difficult it is to sell proprietary versions of BSD-licensed > > software (at least on commodity hardware). > > One example is not enough. (Anyways I don't see the fate of BSD/OS.) Presumably it (BSD/OS) would not have been sold if it had been more than marginally profitable. (Of course, this is just a presumption; I have no inside information.) > Now look at all the proprietary routers, firewalls, UNIX operating systems > and various other software that are based on BSD licensed code and are > succesfully sold. It is one thing to incorporate BSD-licensed code in a larger product, and quite another to try to sell a proprietary version of a free product. Also note that I referred to commodity hardware; selling BSD-licensed code in conjuction with proprietary hardware would be much easier. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message