Re: Linux in a product

In article <1131298477.495087.218860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"slebetman@xxxxxxxxx" <slebetman@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> John S. Dyson wrote:
>> Current use of Linux at work is starting to require more intimate
>> modifications (cannot talk more about it.) We are definitely resisting
>> modifications, but will likely be needed. (The special leave for drivers
>> by Linus will protect some IP.)
>
> Ah, that is the advantage of open source. You can never do this kind of
> thing on most commercial OSes. Even Microsoft's shared source license
> does not mean you can compile a version of Windows on your own, you can
> only see how it works. But in your case I suspect BSD is more
> appropriate since the 'price' is simply acknowledging the author's
> copyright. Of course, if you are not familiar with BSD source code then
> that's a big learning curve which you have spent getting familiar with
> Linux source code.
>
Well, I happen to be MUCH more familiar with the BSD source code (in
particular.) I wrote much of the FreeBSD kernel :-). We did previously
use the Microsoft CE thing, and access to much of the source code (as
you suggested) was of little value to us for product mods. Linux (GPL)
does indeed have generally nicer license terms than Microsoft (and many
others.) BSDL can be marginally better in some cases, but the advantage(s)
and disadvantages of BSDL vs. GPL haven't really been fatal to us yet :-).

>
> BTW, there are some commercial OSes which allow you free access to
> their kernel without restrictive GPL or BSD licenses. OnTime's RTKernel
> is one. The 'price' is simply money, on a per-developer-seat,
> per-product/project basis. I've used it once but the pain of porting
> Linux-ready apps like Apache, webmin, mysql etc drove me back to Linux.
> GPL is a small price to pay for faster time-to-market.
>
Actually, the quality issues that we have seen about the OS/libraries,
etc really haven't been related to license but code/implementation quality.
If we were using a BSDLed kernel instead of GPLed, it really woudln't
have made any difference to us so far.

John

.

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