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▲ wwfn 3 days ago

I would have thought supporting libcurl and libxml would also be in a company's self-interest. Is that companies do this for GPL'ed linux kernel but not BSD evidence that strong copyleft licensing limits the extent to which OSS projects are exploited/under-resourced?

▲big-and-small 3 days ago | parent [-]

  > I would have thought supporting libcurl and libxml would also be in a company's self-interest.
Unfortunately majority of companies don't have something special they really need to add to cURL. They okay using it as is - so they have no reason to pay salary to cURL developers regardless of licensing.

Yes they want it to be secure, but as always nobody except few very large orgs care about security for real.

  > Is that companies do this for GPL'ed linux kernel but not BSD evidence that strong copyleft licensing limits the extent to which OSS projects are exploited/under-resourced?
It certainly helped with "under-resourced" part. Whatever you considered "exploited" is up to discussion. From project perspective ofc copyleft licensing benefited the project.

Linus Torvalds end up with a good amount of publicity and is now somewhat well set-off, but almost all other kernel developers live in obscurity earning somewhat average salaries. I pretty sure we can all agree that Linux Kernel made a massive positive impact on whole humanity and compared to that payoff to stakeholders is rather small IMO.