LeFantome, lefantome@programming.dev

You are wrong. I doubt I will change your mind.

1. There are many, many, many more companies using Linux without giving back than there are for BSD. And not just “using it” either. Practically the entire embedded universe is one giant GPL violation.

2. Linux is not “true” GPL anyway, so it is a poor example for how the GPL impacts success.

3. The companies that build businesses on FreeBSD tend to give back. There are many examples, the biggest being Netflix.

4. The classic example of a company not giving back is Sony and even that is wrong.

5. People choosing a BSD license value different things, rendering your entire premise meaningless for them and your framing of “the problem” inappropriate.

I do not want to get too deep into Sony. But let’s acknowledge that they first tried to ship Linux on PlayStation. They had to stop. Why? Well, it was not because people tried to copy the operating system. It was because people used it to circumvent other protections to copy proprietary games. The problem was not with Sony’s ethics but with those of “the community” and the lack of respect “the community” had for the concept of copyright.

So, Sony switched to a FreeBSD base and they no longer share that code. True.

However, Sony does contribute to BSD. And Sony is a significant contributor to Clang/LLVM and they do share their work freely (even though the license does not require them to). The FreeBSD project benefits from this as Clang is the system compiler. I benefit from this as my Linux distro also uses Clang as the system compiler.

The BSD license is “free software” and provides all “4 freedoms” touted by the FSF. It protects your rights with regards to the code you have and are using. It does not give you guaranteed access to FUTURE code that you do not write. Those future contributors are free to choose their license. You know…freedom.

BSD lags in features, particularly hardware support, because it has fewer users and therefore fewer developers. That is mostly an accident of history and not, in my view, due in any way to the license. Look up the BSD lawsuit that was happening when Linux appeared. If your argument for the popularity of Linux is the GPL, why did Xorg become the dominant window system instead of something GPL based? Why did Rust, Swift, and Zig appear on LLVM instead of GCC?

Anyway, I could write 100 paragraphs and not change your mind. You certainly have not changed mine.

How is it unenforceable?

Real question

Agreed. The need for Flatpak goes way down in a distro with access to the AUR.

I use Flatpak for pgAdmin because the Arch packages are terrible. But it is the only one.

He is doing the same kind of rewrite that the Ladybird founder did recently. They are just reacting differently to how well it is going.

Monoculture is bad for everything.

For one thing, it protects you when your BDFL loses their mind completely.

It IS the early days of GNOME. MATE started with the source code of the last GNOME 2 release.

MATE exists because people loved GNOME 2 and hated GNOME 3.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that they like Debian but dislike systemd.

Arch should have this in a few days to a couple of weeks.

By “shares some of the same codebae”, I assume that you mean both COSMIC and Niri use the Smithay Wayland support library? Or that both Niri and GNOME use xdg-desktop-portal-gnome?

Interesting that you are using PaperWM but recommending Niri.

Have you tried COSMIC yet? Maybe PopOS is worth a shot.

Some packages are a bit old at the moment but they have a release coming in April / May that will bring them right up to date.

Perhaps LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is worth a look as well.

Both options are similar in that they take a very stable distro base and layer on a quite up-to-date desktop.

They also feature clear direction and a predicable release schedule.

Mint or Fedora require no more command line than Windows does.

Probably not a universal answer as you are optimizing for different things.

I will say that EndeavourOS is essentially vanilla Arch once installed. If you really love configuring everything yourself, vanilla Arch is what you are looking for. If you like Arch but just want to fire up a system with sensible defaults, EndeavourOS adds a lot of value without corrupting the purity of the base system.

So, my vote is for EndeavourOS.

Cachy adds the most additional functionality but also changes the base system the most. If you have a T2 MacBook, this is the best option for sure.

I would avoid Manjaro.

Garuda has fans. A bit much for me.

I am not sure why the downvotes.

Redox includes a C library. You should be able to use whatever programming language you want. It does not have to be Rust.

Redox is still adding bits needed for easy porting of more software.

The window system is its own thing at the moment. But they are adding Wayland compatibility.

It will be interesting to see what Redox looks like by the end of 2026. You may get many of your wishes.

You summarized my position very well. Thank you.

I realize I oversimplified a complex set of moves and “shared source” is its own can of worms. My post was already too long.

But my core point is that the code (as Valkey) remained available and remains available under the same free software license that it has always been available under.

The only consequence of what Redis did was that they stopped giving away their “new” code to service providers like Amazon. Even Amazon can continue to use what was there before. And the community can continue to collaborate on the same code base that they were collaborating on before. The licence Redis chooses for its “new” code is largely irrelevant.

We talk about permissive licenses like they represent some massive risk. I just do not see it that way. And they have many advantages including often attracting more corporate participation (more free code for me).

I am a very happy user of Clang/LLVM. It is the product of collaboration between Google, Apple, Sony, Microsoft, academia, and other nerds. I am very happy we have licenses that encourage companies to create quality software for me to use.

I am sure Redis chose BSD to begin with in case they ever had to make a move like they did. If the only option was GPL, they may never have released it as Open Source to begin with. Again, I am glad they did.

I never liked KDE. I used it before there was GNOME but I used GNOME 2 for years and Cinnamon or XFCE after that.

I probably tried KDE4 once and KDE5 a couple times. Not for me. But I have used KDE a lot since Plasma 6. I have to agree with you. They are doing a great job. It is probably the best environment for Wayland.

I also use COSMIC a bit and Niri is my favourite environment. But I do seem to be using Plasma 6 a lot. It is sitting in front of me now.

First, there has been massive amounts of MIT code in important parts of the Linux ecosystem for decades. Xorg, Wayland, and Mesa for starters. The sky has not fallen. I am not exactly panicking.

But let’s address your specific example.

Let start by pointing out that Redis was BSD, not MIT. But let’s assume your cautionary tale applies.

A truly gigantic corporation, Amazon, was making all the money off Redis without giving anything back to the company that actually wrote the code (Redis). So, Redis tried to change the license to make that more difficult. The license they chose is the strictest free software license the FSF offers—the AGPL.

Pop quiz: what part of the above are we “the community” outraged about? The clearly predatory Amazon stuff? Or the defensive action by the company writing all the code? That’s right, we are mad at the company that gave us all the code for free and that still licenses it AGPL.

But even beyond that, what was lost again? Because the implication is that BSD (or MIT) somehow allows companies to “take” free software from us. This is false.

What happened with Redis is that the original code remained 100% available. And it remained part of a 100% free software project. It remains 100% BSD licensed to this day. You can use it, you can study it, you can improve it, you can share it, and you can even sell it commercially! It offers you at least FIVE freedoms.

https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey

Not a single line of code was lost from the project. Yes, the project had to change its name (Redis owns the name Redis). Yes, Redis stopped contributing to the project. Is that not their right?

It is that last bit that seems to drive us mad. We yell about corporations taking our code. But all the examples of bad behaviour we give boil down to them choosing to give us less of theirs.

If “the community” is the one writing the code, nobody can take it from us. And even if big evil companies are writing the code, the only code that they can deny us is code they write in the future.

I find it hard to be either outraged or even particularly afraid of that.

Anyway, I do not want to talk you out of your license preferences. I have no beef with that. But I do wish there was less FUD slinging at projects that choose to license their hard work as MIT.

I do not know how that article covered so much background on GNU hURD and the quest for a micro-kernel UNIX without mentioning Redox OS.

https://www.redox-os.org/

Redox is also micro-kernel based POSIX compatible operating system (UNIX compatible). So quite like the GNU project and HURD in that sense.

Redox is younger, 10 years old instead of 30, and more “modern” (eg. written in Rust). It can be seen as a GNU competitor as it does not rely on the GNU C library or utilities.