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What sense is licensing operating system on BSD license?
(lemmy.world)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This is the thing that people overlook. Carrying a patch set is a burden, and companies have to maintain the patch set. Upstream isn’t going to care about the patch set because not their problem, and they will make changes which benefit the open code in their repos.
I’ve seen a company modify a FOSS project to fit their needs and get stuck with a multi-year old version because their changes were incompatible with never versions. They had to scrap the system and start over.
Regardless of license, not contributing upstream creates a problem unless the company has the stomach to support the whole thing on their own.