Sparkling Gems and News from the World of Free and Open Source Software
FOSSPicks
This month, we explore the top FOSS, including a powerful video downloader, a command-line torrent client, and a privacy-focused grammar checker.
Copyleft Behind
Readers of Linux Magazine will likely already know that FreeBSD underpins products such as Sony's PlayStation operating systems and Netflix's Open Connect. That's the lure of the BSD license: A company can take a coherent, production-ready operating system, modify it, and then ship the result as a proprietary product with very few obligations.
The GPL proposes a different social contract. It doesn't prevent commercial use – far from it. But when a distributor releases a modified GPL program, it generally must make the corresponding source code available under the GPL. Copyleft's supporters see that condition as a vital rubicon that mustn't be crossed: Commercial success is welcome, but improvements should remain available to all users, not just those who buy the product.
That tension lends weight to FreeBSD's long campaign to remove GNU code from its base system. The FreeBSD 16 development branch has recently retired the final GPL-licensed software from the base system, dialog, along with its remaining consumers, after the installer had already moved to the BSD-licensed bsddialog. The old gnu/ source-tree directory has also been removed. Progress, then, but in what direction? A cleaner BSD system, certainly, but is a more commercially exploitable one better for open source development generally?
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