Author Topic: Why so little in the way of BSDs on ARM?  (Read 10228 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline stmdude

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 479
  • Country: se
Re: Why so little in the way of BSDs on ARM?
« Reply #25 on: February 12, 2018, 06:51:37 pm »
I just don't understand people who want to write software for free under a BSD style license without getting any payment and let other companies make money with it and without the obligation to give modifications back... :-//

I'm one of those people. The reason for me writing software is that I love doing it. I develop weird and wonderful pieces of code, some of it is even useful. ;)

I'd love it if more people find it useful and makes their lives easier in some way. To me, it doesn't matter if they use it at home for their own pet projects, or if they include it in the latest wiz-bang 2000 commercial product. I still had fun when I wrote it.

So, the only way to allow people to use it whenever, wherever is to use a non-copyleft license (such as BSD, MIT, etc), as a lot of companies are either scared of even accidentally violating the GPL, or are unwilling to set up the infrastructure/routines to comply with the copyleft. (Yes, I know it's not a big deal, but they think differently)

I know for a fact that my BSD-licensed code have shipped in 10s of millions of devices due to just one company using it. There might be more that I don't know of, but that's okay.

It's not really something fancy, but it does what it needs really well, and it has been very well tested. If I hadn't BSD-licensed that code, the company probably would have rolled their own solution to it.

So, I see it as two options.
1. I use a license that's compatible with proprietary software, and save someone a couple of weeks work
or
2. I use a copyleft license, and nobody uses it, and I "waste" two weeks of some engineers time, writing something I have already written, but probably not as well tested.

I'm not trying to sway anyone towards a non-copyleft license here. I'm just saying why _I'm_ doing things a certain way.

To me, software only has value when its being used. With a non-copyleft license, more people can use it.

As for money?  None of my project will solve world hunger, create peace on earth or do anything people would (or should) pay money for. I make money for food and shelter by developing proprietary products. My payback for giving away my software is that I get to use other peoples software that they give away.
 
The following users thanked this post: orin, evb149

Offline NiHaoMike

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8972
  • Country: us
  • "Don't turn it on - Take it apart!"
    • Facebook Page
Re: Why so little in the way of BSDs on ARM?
« Reply #26 on: February 14, 2018, 04:20:45 am »
What about LGPL as a middle ground?
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Online Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6692
  • Country: nl
Re: Why so little in the way of BSDs on ARM?
« Reply #27 on: February 14, 2018, 05:17:30 am »
Is there any reason why there are tons of Linux distros for ARM based SBCs like Raspberry Pi but little in the way of BSD support for them?

Most of the Linux kernels which run on these SBCs are offshoots from Android development with binary blobs and byzantine build procedures specific to a given kernel version.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2018, 05:20:54 am by Marco »
 

Offline cdevTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Why so little in the way of BSDs on ARM?
« Reply #28 on: February 14, 2018, 07:04:10 am »
Now that Ive looked into it Ive found you can run FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD on the RPI and other arm64 boards.

You just have to dig a bit to find them.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Karel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2214
  • Country: 00
Re: Why so little in the way of BSDs on ARM?
« Reply #29 on: February 14, 2018, 07:25:54 am »
What about LGPL as a middle ground?

A lot of libraries are already using the Lesser GPL.
GNU Project leader Richard Stallman wrote the essay Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library
explaining that the LGPL had not been deprecated, but that one should not necessarily use the LGPL for all libraries:

Quote from: Richard Stallman
Which license is best for a given library is a matter of strategy...
Using the ordinary GPL for a library gives free software developers an advantage over proprietary developers:
a library that they can use, while proprietary developers cannot use it... When a free library's features are readily
available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries... the library cannot give free software any
particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library.

I think he is right.

 

Offline cdevTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Why so little in the way of BSDs on ARM?
« Reply #30 on: April 29, 2018, 03:26:18 am »
He's a very smart guy.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Karel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2214
  • Country: 00
Re: Why so little in the way of BSDs on ARM?
« Reply #31 on: April 29, 2018, 08:12:35 am »
Also, there are libraries which come with a GPL license and a commercial license.
You pay only when you want to use it in closed source software. Looks like the best solution to me.

Some examples:

https://www.qt.io/

https://kfrlib.com/
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf