People like to talk like GPL is evil, but it's underpinning more of the world than many people see.
And thanks to no ABI/API stability guarantees, Linux can innovate and doesn't care about what others might say. Considering Linux is developed mostly by companies today, the standard upkeep of a driver is not a burden unless you want to shove planned obsolescence down the throats of the consumers (cough Win11 TPM requirements cough).
I wouldn’t call the GPL “evil”, but I do think it’s more unrealistic given current western economics and mooching practices. Some copyright here and there does help keep food and water on the table.
> Some copyright here and there does help keep food and water on the table.
While I'm a strong Free Software proponent, I'm not a zealot and insist on a black or white approach.
Yes, some software can be closed source, I agree, but it shouldn't be the bedrock software, i.e. anything required to enable hardware (firmware, OS, and preferably the utilities).
For the record, I'm paying for a couple closed source software packages on Linux which provide very unique feature s. These are inSync and Pagico.
On top of that, you can always sell GPL software (remember, you shall ship the source with the product. opening it it to everyone is not a requirement). On top of it, you can sell support or special versions. curl has a special version for paying customers, and ccid driver developers sell ccid compliance testing.
So, there are always alternatives, and the reality has more shades of gray than two distinct colors.
Despite the FSF's word games with "copyleft", the GNU GPL, Creative Commons, and F/OSS licenses rely on legal copyright protections in order to work. It's the copyright holder who reserves the right to license the software by those terms.
Closed source is protected in other ways besides copyright. Trade secrets, confidentiality, NDA, proprietary ownership, obfuscation, and in the case of hardware, big globs of epoxy and other countermeasures to ensure nobody can get in and reverse-engineer it.
And thanks to no ABI/API stability guarantees, Linux can innovate and doesn't care about what others might say. Considering Linux is developed mostly by companies today, the standard upkeep of a driver is not a burden unless you want to shove planned obsolescence down the throats of the consumers (cough Win11 TPM requirements cough).