Why I'm Switching to BSD(swaous.asuscomm.com)
swaous.asuscomm.com
Why I'm Switching to BSD
https://swaous.asuscomm.com/blog/index.php/2025/10/28/why-im-switching-to-bsd/
4 comments
Unfortunately titled - it should be Why I'm Switching to BSD Licensing.
I thought I was going to read an article about why the author switched to BSD presumably from Linux. But it's all about switching from GPLv2/GPLv3 licensing to the BSD license. Interesting, but not what I was expecting.
I thought I was going to read an article about why the author switched to BSD presumably from Linux. But it's all about switching from GPLv2/GPLv3 licensing to the BSD license. Interesting, but not what I was expecting.
The author is deeply misguided and clearly frustrated. The claim that the GPL can't be enforced is simply wrong. GPL violations are regularly challenged in court and through community pressure. But let's assume for a moment that the author's claims are valid in the context of AI. Wouldn't the GPL be just another permissive license? Why switch to the BSD license, which explicitly throws away the one right GPL still guarantees: the ability to demand that derivative works remain open?
The GPL gives you enforceable rights. The BSD license gives corporations a free pass to close off your code. Calling this "pragmatic" isn't just backward, it abandons protections that matter. And frankly, it baffles my mind that someone who believes closed source shouldn't exist would be this fatalist to give up the leverage that still protects openness.
The GPL gives you enforceable rights. The BSD license gives corporations a free pass to close off your code. Calling this "pragmatic" isn't just backward, it abandons protections that matter. And frankly, it baffles my mind that someone who believes closed source shouldn't exist would be this fatalist to give up the leverage that still protects openness.
Interesting argument.
As an engineer, I leverage copyleft licences like GPL to open source some of my code. If I can tell my company "you see, I need to open source that module because the law says so, because it depends on that GPL project", then it makes them at least consider it, and often they accept (because let's be honest, that module is not that important). Similarly, if I fork and fix a bug in a dependency that uses a copyleft licence, I can justify actually contributing back.
Note that in both cases I'm abusing the licences: GPL does not say at all that you need to contribute your changes back upstream. But I have been able to convince managers of that easily in the past. Whereas they all know really well that permissive licences pretty much means that they can do whatever they want, and they surely don't want to think about open sourcing anything if there is no need.
If you use permissive licences, I lose that argument. So if my company uses your library, you will never hear about it, ever.
Regarding my personal projects... well I gave up on the "community" idea long ago: my experience when open sourcing for the sake of helping others is that others will try to abuse me. By pressuring me in all sorts of ways so that they benefit from my free work. I'm done with that. If I open source something, it's for my personal portfolio. But at that point I may as well keep it copyleft, so that maybe it enables other engineers to leverage it in their companies.
It's true that LLMs are open source laundering machines, but I would still rather use Linux than vibe-code a kernel. And Linux stays GPLv2.