| ▲ | doublepg23 4 days ago | |
> Evidently BSD is a go-to choice for consumers today, but many don't realize it, and those of us who do often do not think about it. Is this not even more true than with Linux in the billions strong Android? | ||
| ▲ | evanjrowley 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | |
Links 3 through 6 in my comment touched upon this. My point is that even companies behind commercial Linux products are trying to resist the GPL. In 2021, it appeared that Google was planning a pivot to their own BSD/MIT-licensed OS named Fuscia. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/googles-fuchsia-smar... This pivot seemed to end around the same time tech layoffs were occuring in 2024. https://9to5google.com/2024/01/15/google-is-no-longer-bringi... Since then, Google has chosen to limit the amount of open source development done for the Android OS. https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-development-... Keeping Android kernel development internal creates greater risk of binary blobs polluting the source code. Binary blobs might be a practical solution to bring products to market, but they are also a mechanism to circumvent the GPL. I doubt Google will take this problem seriously, but other Linux distributions have. https://lwn.net/Articles/655519/ The move by Google mirrors the choice by Red Hat to keep RHEL source code private. https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/ The common trend is product managers for these companies view the GPL as a bug instead of a feature. | ||
| ▲ | bee_rider 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
I’m not sure which comes out ahead if we count all of these kinds of devices. There are probably a lot of lightbulbs and routers out there running some variant of BSD or Linux, but only the manufacturer knows (I mean, you can often figure it out, but who cares?). Anyway, it is important to keep in mind that the useful “size” metric of a community led open source project is the number of developer-hours being contributed to it, not the number of users. It is a fun bit of trivia that these devices are everywhere, and maybe good news for open source fans’ career prospects. But that’s all. | ||
| ▲ | pjmlp 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Linux kernel, not GNU/Linux, which is what folks trying to misuse NDK always get wrong. | ||