Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

[Les Mikesell]

Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> 
>>> Would the world be a better place with no GPL and all software created
>>> by those who now create code under the GPL putting it into the public
>>> domain instead?
> 
>> Microsoft would almost certainly have been displaced years ago by many
>> other companies building better products containing this code
> 
> Or...  Microsoft would have used that code and used it to control
> people in just the same way it does with every other piece of software
> it touches.

The only software that they can use to control anyone is their OS, and 
they can only do that as long as no one ships something competitive 
enough to attract application development.  That hasn't happened, 
largely because of GPL restrictions on code that might otherwise have 
been used in such products.

> Isn't this why Microsoft hates the GPL and loves
> permissive Free Software licenses?

I wouldn't say they love permissive licenses.  Look how long they 
shipped their own broken TCP/IP stack when the well-tested BSD version 
was available and everyone on the network would have been better if they 
had used it from the start (remember the win95 version where the retries 
speeded up instead of backing off when packets were dropped due to 
congestion?).  Anyway it is the GPL that has kept them rich and in control.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com