What's The Linux Kernel Worth? 376
schneelocke writes "What's the value of the Linux kernel? After an offer by one Jeff V. Merkey to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed copy of Linux, David Wheeler does some calculations and comes up with an estimate of 612M USD." Wheeler has come up with a number of interesting software-worth estimates and other quantified facts about Free software; since some aspects involve ineffables and hypotheticals, the details can be argued, but he provides a good framework with SLOCCount.
Nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
Before you get your tights in a twist, just listen to me for a moment. The value of a product in a capitalistic system is determined by what the market is willing to bear. Yet it is not worth anything if the developers are not willing to sell it at what the market demands. Thus we have a gap. The market would probably be willing to bear a few million (perhaps as high as 50 million) dollars for the Linux IP. Yet it seems that the developers would demand a price in the range of 612 million.
The end result is that the Linux kernel has no market value what so ever. The developers won't sell it at the market's price, and the market won't buy it at the developers price.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not quite true. The market value is what the market would buy the product for, if it WAS for sale.
Imagine that you have a car, which you for whatever reason don't want to sell at the moment. This doesn't leave your car with "no market value". The market value is still what the market would have bought it for if it was for sale.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
In your example there is a market for collector cars which can be used to find a market price.
But it would be better to say "priceless" than "nothing"
Combining your post with a letter one. (Score:3, Insightful)
There is not a market for Linux kernels.
The Linux kernel still has value in the earlier market.
There is a market for paintings.
There is not a market for Mono Lisas.
The Mona Lisa still has value in the earlier market.
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
It's rare that he actually contributes something worthwhile.
There can be no seller (Score:4, Insightful)
The Linux code is owned by, perhaps, thousands of people [the individual contributors/copyrightholders]. Each of these could sell you non-GPL rights to their code, but not to anyone elses.
Linus "owns" probably less than 10% of the code. That'a a much bigger share than the 0.05% or so that I've written, but he still can't sell it.
Re: Nothing (Score:3, Funny)
> The end result is that the Linux kernel has no market value what so ever. The developers won't sell it at the market's price, and the market won't buy it at the developers price.
Yeah, I'm waiting for SCOX [yahoo.com] to come down off its high horse before I buy it, too.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
A DSL connection to the internet: $50
A decent PC: $500
Downloading enterprize-class source code: Priceless.
There is some code you can't buy, for everything else, there's Microsoft.
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Priceless is running it on your home computer, finding a bug, fixing it, and having Linus Torvalds tell you your patch is going in and millions of other people will see it in an hour.
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Funny)
Priceless is running it on your home computer, finding a bug, fixing it, and having Linus Torvalds tell you your patch is going in and millions of other people will see it in an hour.
Or better yet: finding a bug, reporting in on the kernel mailing list, and starting a gigantic flame war ;)
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently that is what some people here think. They also think my wife is worth nothing I might add. I however think she is priceless, as is my son.
A Nony Mouse
Re:Nothing (Score:2)
but that's totaling all the software on the disc you'd be getting from a distro. I can't find the article that origionally said this.
Voodoo Economics Again? (Score:3, Insightful)
We can, to some extent, model the overall economy and predict economic growth, but such models are imprecise. Further, modeling the overall economy is easier than predicting the prec
Priceless... essentially (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux - priceless .
Of course, unless you consider all those hours you pored over google results and irc chats about *that* bug in the 2.2 kernel, waay back in '99.
I've invested too much time and effort in Linux to consider it "Free" in an economic sense. But , yeah it pays to be the admin , not developers.But, I've sent my share of patches
Re:Nothing (Score:2)
The market is willing to bear a lot for the Linux kernel. It is willing to bear programmers time (and pay them for it). It is willing to bear costs of promotion and advertisment. It is willing to bear spending the time to develop it in the first place. You need to expand your view of the market to be beyond the people who would potentionally (sp) buy the software, to include those that buy and use it in o
Mu (Score:5, Interesting)
To an accountant, all assets are valued at their expense, minus any prior amortization or markdowns. Most Linux users would thus have to include in their valuation any time they spent downloading, configuring, and installing the kernel.
I would have to include a few hundred dollars for the time to develop, test, and submit the (very small) patch I submitted. With ten years of their life put into it, Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, etc would each have to value it at several million dollars.
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft asks for a price for Windows. I'm not willing to pay more than 3 dollars for it. Our disagreement over this does not make Windows without market value.
The interesting exercise would be to figure out what all of us that are running Linux would be willing to pay for it if it were suddenly unavailable at no cost, not the math of what one person is trying to sell it for times number of potential installs. I think the price of what _investors_ are willing to pay f
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at supply and demand (Score:2)
It's a lot like air, which also has a market value of zero. There's plenty of it to go around even though it's free. Therefore it has no economic value.
Of course, another similarity between Linux and air is that it's really valuable to those who use
null vs zero (Score:3, Insightful)
The market value of the linux kernel is null--it does not have one. That's very different from having a value of zero, which would be the case if there were a market and the only way you could transfer ownership of the kernel in that market would be to give it away.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Estimating based on what it would cost in a commercial environment is also flawed, because there are too many variables to consider. If it were developed in, say, Silicon Valley, each programmer's hourly rate would probably approach $100. If it were developed in, say, Boise, Idaho, the hourly rate for these programmers would probably be in the neighborhood of $20 to $30. There is also development models, management, total personnel required, etc. These things will all vary depending on the nature of the business, what kind of timelines they were looking at, who the management team was, etc.
The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities), the total value of their time put into the project is $0. Sure, you could try and put it in terms of an opportunity cost to the developer, but that sort of thing leads to inflated valuations, since in all likelihood if these guys weren't writing the code in their spare time, they would be doing some other hobby that doesn't pay them anything instead.
The bottom line here is, the only time that you can assign a value to is the time that someone actually received a wage for. This is a small minority of the overall code base, so by that method the code would not be worth much at all.
Therefore, all we are left to consider is whether or not Linux is a good value to the consumer. Generally speaking, a good value to the consumer is one in which they extract more value out of the product then what they paid for it. Since most people get Linux for free, it doesn't take much to get more than what you paid out of it, especially if you use it in a business context. There are those, of course, who will get negative value out of it (they get frustrated and throw the computer out the window, for example), but the vast majority of users will get a net positive value out of the product. Putting a dollar amount on that value is difficult, though.
Re:Nothing (Score:2)
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
The greatest part of the "worth" of these things is that they are public and shared freely with everyone.
Why the hell would some idiot want to buy a BSD-licensed Linux? Just go get yourself a BSD.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we keep saying this when it is so patently untrue?
Were the SGI engineers payed nothing for their work on the Linux kernel? The DEC engineers who made 2.0 possible? The IBM engineers who ported massive amounts of IBM code into Linux (the topic of a lawsuit, I'll remind you) and wrote a good amount of their own code? What about the Red Hat engineers who have contributed hugely? Alan Cox isn't paid? I think he'd be upset to hear it. Last I checked Linus was being paid specifically for his work on Linux by OSDL.
These are just the high-profile cases. Dozens of people around the world are paid to work on specific niches of the Linux kernel all the time.
Same thing goes for the rest of the OS tools, utilities, and subsystems.
The fact that some, even a majority (and I'm not conviced on that point) of the work might be gratis does not mean "the developers have always been paid nothing."
Re:Nothing (Score:2)
Also except those with salaries from governments, universities, nonprofits,....
Is there actually a prominent kernel hacker that has "always been paid nothing for their work"?
--Bruce Fields
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Funny)
Sure there is. Just average the figures $50K and infinity and you get the market price: infinity dollars.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
So... if I fix a flat tire on my car myself, that labor has a value of zero dollars? Even 'tho I just saved myself twenty bucks? If I fix my neighbor's computer for free, saving her fifty bucks in the process, the value of my labor is zero? If I spend some time I could be laboring for a paycheck instead engrossed in a hobby, that time has zero value?
Dude... you got some fucked up values
Value:
1 # An amount, as of goods, services, or money, considered to be a fair and suitable equivalent for something else; a fair price or return.
2 # Monetary or material worth: the fluctuating value of gold and silver.
3 # Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit: the value of an education.
4 # A principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable: "The speech was a summons back to the patrician values of restraint and responsibility" (Jonathan Alter).
Therefore, all we are left to consider is whether or not Linux is a good value to the consumer.
By your measure it's not - it's completely worthless unless that consumer paid for it.
What is the value to me of a diamond? Only what I could sell it for - I have no use for a diamond (unless, perhaps, I need to cut a piece of glass). Bottom line is you expended a lot of words saying nothing. Value and price are not directly related, nor even comparable to one another.
Author responds... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, your next statement is somewhat missing the point: "Estimating based on what it would cost in a commercial environment is also flawed, because there are too many variables to consider." Yes, salaries and overheads vary, and they'll certainly affect the answer. But I used a U.S.-nationwide average for salaries, and several sources for the overhead value. See "Gigabuck" for more info. So this is an "average" kind of development. If you don't like those assumptions, I gave enough information for you to recompute everything using different values. But you have to make some assumptions, and I think these are quite reasonable ones; I basically picked averages to represent an "average" development project's costs.
But then you say stuff that I think isn't right: "The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities) ... since in all likelihood if these guys weren't writing the code in their spare time, they would be doing some other hobby...
The bottom line here is, the only time that you can assign a value to is the time that someone actually received a wage for. This is a small minority of the overall code base, so by that method the code would not be worth much at all."
Two problems: first, I'm computing re-development cost, and presuming that the developers would be getting a wage. And second, most of the changes in the Linux kernel are from developers getting a wage to do so.
In fact, the move to wage-earning OSS/FS development has been one of the silent trends in the IT industry. In 2004, Government Computer News reported in July 2004 on a presentation by Andrew Morton [gcn.com], who leads maintenance of the the Linux kernel in its stable form, and confirmed the trend towards paid OSS/FS developers. Morton spoke at a meeting sponsored by the Forum on Technology and Innovation, to address technology-related issues, held by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D- Ore.) and the Council on Competitiveness. Morton noted that "People's stereotype [of the typical Linux developer] is of a male computer geek working in his basement writing code in his spare time, purely for the love of his craft. Such people were a significant force up until about five years ago ..." but contributions from such enthusiasts, "is waning... Instead, most Linux kernel code is now generated by corporate programmers." Morton noted that "About 1,000 developers contribute changes to Linux on a regular basis... Of those 1,000 developers, about 100 are paid to work on Linux by their employers. And those 100 have contributed about 37,000 of the last 38,000 changes made to the operating system."
For more about the general trend of employed OSS/FS developers, see http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#wont-destr oy-industry [dwheeler.com].
This isn't new in a sense; X Windows was started
this way, as was Apache. It's just become
more common.
Re:Nothing (Score:2)
Ah, the cost is going to actually be higher for Linux due to some paradoxes within Economics, opportunity cost, economies of scale. But I'm quite sure you would have come to the same conclusion. Not really a good way to compare the two
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
Value is entirely contextual. A quart of pure water is worth a lot more to someone stranded in the deserts of Utah than it would have been to a member of the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald, for example.
Re:Nothing (Score:3, Funny)
ooooh (Score:5, Funny)
Who woulda thunk it.....
perhaps... (Score:5, Funny)
You just can't... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You just can't... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You just can't... (Score:3, Funny)
Linux-based operating systems rarely sell for more than $50. And more often than not people just download it for free. Of course that's with GPL. Without GPL I'm sure it would be worth 600M or whatever. GPL seems to really devalue your software.
Re:You just can't... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You just can't... (Score:3, Insightful)
Other open source projects... (Score:2)
Obligatuary quote (Score:5, Funny)
612 millions? (Score:2)
Re:612 millions? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not the way the market works though. Only a small fraction of people pay full asking price. The others pay less via sales, rebates, coupons, volume discounts, or other incentives. And yes, some will pay zero by stealing it.
The key to maximizing profit is not to have one price, but to have a spectrum
Have to say it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I have to wonder, how much would it cost to pay Microsoft to GPL their Office product file formats?
Re:Have to say it... (Score:2)
What do you mean? Release GPL code for reading/writing these file formats, or do you mean release the specifications for these file formats (in which case the GPL would be an unsuitable license since it's not source code).
As for the latter.. that might become available for free.. If the EU antitrust guys do their job properly.
What's the Linux kernel worth? (Score:2, Insightful)
In an increasingly technologically based society and future, the GNU license provides the theoretical foundation for freedom.
It's Linux, and all the other Free (as in speech) software that gives us the practical foundation to realise this freedom.
What price on that?
Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would they do that? What advantage is there to the BSD vs GPL licenses?
The only advantage is that if you redistribute or sell software that is GPLed, you have to provide source code - with BSD you don't.
So, Merkey's company wants to sell modified Linux without providing source code to the modifications. While I doubt the modifications are worth that much, he apparently does.
Why wouldn't Merkey use FreeBSD for the application he wants to sell? Almost all linux software is available for FreeBSD, and then he wouldn't have to pay $50,000 for a license.
Or can someone explain this to me?
Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ... (Score:2)
Merkey is a CHEAP BASTARD! (Score:2)
The least he could've done was adjust for inflation. Add to that the fact that Linux is much more sophisticated (and way more lines of code) and any fool can see the offer was a complete joke.
Assuming Merkey was serious about the offer, The BSD license would permit Merkey to sell a commercial OS based on the Linux kernel.
Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ... (Score:2)
Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Some adolescant university pet project to run my core systems???"
Isn't this the same opinion PHB's had of Linux?
And will there be headaches from people that "report" the lack of source to Linus, FSF, et. al?
Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ... (Score:5, Interesting)
About two years ago I was speaking to the developer who had ported Linux to a particular hardware security device. I asked him why he had gone with Linux instead of OpenBSD as his base. He stated that it was his preference to go with OpenBSD, or any of the flavors of BSD, but he went with Linux because the company is publically committed to Linux and Linux has a marketing value that the BSDs do not. It is better to say, "Our gadget now runs Linux! Won't your developers be happy?" than it is to say, "Our gagdet now runs OpenBSD! Won't your developers be happy?"
Basically there are often non-technical reasons for wanting to use Linux even when some other OS would be a better technical fit.
Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ... (Score:2)
Yup. And the number commercial products with BSD derived code in them is much greater than GPLed code because of this.
Why wouldn't Merkey use FreeBSD for the application he wants to sell? Almost all linux software is available for FreeBSD, and then he wouldn't have to pay $50,000 for a license.
Or can someone explain this to me?
1st, he wants the kernel not almost all lin
Merkey works for SCO (Score:3, Informative)
Gentlemen, at this time, I ask that you don your tinfoil hats.
with BSD you don't
Exactly. Now, suppose you want to sell licenses to people for using your IP in Linux, but people tell you "hey, that's under GPL - you distributed it, so you can't charge a license fee."
Merkey's company wants to sell modified Linux without providing source code to the modifications.
Yes, yes it does. Think about that - think abo
FreeBSD *is* Linux! :) (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, who am I to tell 'em different? I used to refer to Abiword as "my version of Word", as in, "My version of Word seems to have problems with your file, could you try resending as RTF?" Nobody ever questioned me (which just shows how overrated the notion of Word as a "standard" is).
As noted in the article... (Score:2)
Or was that Steff Murky? (Score:2, Funny)
Sure it wasn't Stef Murkey [userfriendly.org]?
Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'm trying to suggest is that, like the works of Van Gogh or Matisse, Linux is perhaps greater than the sum of its parts. Even if you were to cleanroom reimplement Linux, that only takes care of the engineering side. We live in a world where intellectual property is king, so shouldn't some financial reg
Mu (Score:5, Insightful)
What is air worth? Some things have great value, but simply trying to measure that value in dollars is to misunderstand the nature of that value.
Re:Mu (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mu (Score:2)
I agree that Linux's value to the community is "priceless" in that you can't really quantify very easily things like sense of community, the feeling of freedom and so on (well, you can generally qu
Re:Mu (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't think of money as having intrinsic value, or objects as having intrinsic price tags. Money is a convenient abstraction which allows us to assig
the answer is... (Score:2)
I Thought This Was Already Established (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly it's $699.
High Flying (Score:2)
Strange to think of it in these terms, but when you think about it the kernel is at this point at the same, or a greater level of complexity than an aircraft design, and is probobly in use by more people than the average aircraft model at this point. What is the current population of the republic of linux these days anyway?
No price is high enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about that, and then tell me how much the Linux kernel is worth. $50,000? A few hundred million? A billion or more? Nope -- it's like a MasterCard commercial, in real life. "Having an operating system Microsoft can never own: PRICELESS."
I suppose I could get a "funny" mod by saying "There are some things money can't buy; for everything else, there's Microsoft" but I'm actually dead serious here.
Makes no sense... (Score:2)
With the GPL you make GPL software better. With BSD you make all software better. Many of us still use Windows from time to time... why wouldn't we want Windows to be better too? Even if Windows becomes better than every *BSD in every way we can still have our own functional, free (libre) operating system.
Really who past their a
pretty safe offer (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed (Score:2)
Never mind this deal...
Re:pretty safe offer (Score:5, Informative)
While there are some benefits to having a single copyright holder, you need a lot of bookkeeping to track everyone's copyright assignments and a lot of work to make sure they are proper. US copyright law requires that any copyright assignment be in writing and identify (in writing) exactly for what works copyrights are being assigned. Many European countries recognize "natural rights" or "droits d'auteur" that cannot be assigned to a third party. Some programmers have employment contracts that stipulate all software copyrights for things they write while employed belong to their employer, even if the software was written on the programmer's own time. Et cetera.
Linus decided either the effort was not worth it or that there were other benefits to not requiring copyright assignments. The Free Software Foundation does go to the effort to work all the details out. If you (or anyone else) wants to have a single copyright holder for a GPLed program, I encourage you to assign that copyright to the FSF. It saves a lot of effort on your part and ensures that the copyright holder has both the resources and resources to protect the software.
Why (Score:2)
The 3-clause BSD licence is poisonous, because it allows someone effectively to turn an open-source product into a closed-source one, just by not distributing the source code. {The 2-clause variant allowing source code distribution only is fine for stuff written in interpreted languages -- but makes it inconveni
Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "poisonous" at all. Keep your FUD out of this. While one can take BSD licensed source code and create a binary closed source product, this is not "poisonous". The orginal source code is still there. The orginal project is still there.
It would be like someone taking one apple from a free apple tree and locking it up. Are people going to be screaming "he poisoned the tree" when he locks up one apple? Of course not!
Re:Why (Score:3, Informative)
BSD/OS was not the only proprietary fork. There were literally dozens. From an article by Eugene Kim: "Indeed, most of the commercial versions of UNIX in the 1980s were based on BSD UNIX". A partial list of BSDs was prepared by Levenez for his UNIX History [levenez.com]. And don't feel tempted to discredit or dismiss Levenez just because SCO intentionally misrepresents the information on his website. Levenez is a
But is this really accurate? (Score:2)
I could purchase a copy of windows for $200 even though it cost a couple of billions to develop. So although this figure is interesting, it really doesn't mean anything -and thats assuming the licensing issues could be overcome.
Re:But is this really accurate? (Score:2)
I could purchase a copy of windows for $200 even though it cost a couple of billions to develop. So although this figure is interesting, it really doesn't mean anything -and thats assuming the licensing issues could be overcome.
Sure, and you can get a copy of Linux for free. That isn't the point. You'll never get a copy of Window's source for an
The best reply? (Score:2)
I wonder... (Score:2)
Cost vs Value (Score:2, Informative)
For example, Windows is *worth* more than it costs to produce (based on profit margins), meaning people are willing to pay more than it takes to make it, which is another way of saying that Windows is worth more to consumers than it costs to make.
Now, windows is a monopoly so the price tends to go towards the worth of the product, not the cost. Linux is highly competitive (with ma
Misconceptions (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't about a consumer price for a kernel binary. Comparisons with copies of Windows are irrelevant. The $612 million dollars quoted is a suggested figure representing the kind of cost a commercial company would have to take on to develop an identical operating system kernel.
Software companies have in the past changed hands for large sums of money. The brand is of course worth some of that money, as are relationships with existing customers, but a large part of that value is the IP possessed by the company. There are few companies that have possessed software assets of a complexity and widespread use comparable to the Linux kernel that have changed hands, and such companies when sold have been bought for large sums - to pick one example, Netscape was bought by AOL at a price tag of $4.2 billion dollars.
The value of the Linux kernel code and Linux branding, if a company with sufficient resources were interested in obtaining it, and if it were for sale, would quite probably exceed this figure of $612 million by a sizeable percentage.
$50K is a derisory offer for even an non-exclusive right to develop and redistribute the IP, which is effectively what a solitary copy under the BSD licence would give. Certainly the company I work for would laugh helplessly if such an offer was made for our code, which is several orders of magnitude smaller and less complex than the kernel.
Savant
Re:Misconceptions (Score:2)
Windows NT is (arguably) a derivative of DEC's VMS operating system. Back in the early 90's microsoft settled a case with digital for copyright problems. (Anyone know the value?)
When cray research developed the cs6400 server, they licensed solaris from sun. I wonder what they paid or that.
Microsoft's SQL server is a derivative of sybase. Anyone know what they paid for th
Very little (Score:3, Insightful)
whositwhatnow? (Score:2)
What is mathematics worth? (Score:2)
What is mathematics worth? Shouldn't we pay Pythagoras' decendants a royalty each time we use his triangle theorem? How about the theory of electromagnetism? Shouldn't we kick in a few cents to Maxwell's decendents each time we use an electrical device? The works of Shakespeare? Free software, like the Linux kernel belong to a body of knowledge that is not really saleable but are beyond value. Our society may be highly influenced by capitalist ideas, but they are not universal.
10 Billion ++ (Score:5, Interesting)
What exactly would you be buying? (Score:3, Insightful)
What exactly would you be buying?
The right to make it proprietary? (Sell it or a derivative for a lot of money) That'd be worth a lot to a few of companies - who wouldn't sell it they'd just keep it locked up and continue selling their own product?
The right to use it? Value there would be $0 thanks. You already have that for free unless you want to modify in a way that doesn't comply with the GPL.
The right to sell it. People already do that - oh sorry correction my mistake sell support for it.
The question is pointless because you can't un-GPL it once its been released under GPL...which is the point of that license.
I think the question being asked here is what would it cost to develop something similar? The answer is bucketloads. But why would you want to? How many freaking times does UNIX need to be redeveloped. Go create a different OS.
Re:Poll! (Score:2)
-ps. I have 5 gmail invites left. post here with your email address backwards and i'll send one to you. First 5 posted here (not emailed) get them. I'm trying desperately to get rid of em
Invites (Score:2)
Re:Invites (Score:2)
Re:$600 M is ridiculous (Score:2)
Re:$600 M is ridiculous (Score:2)
Re:$600 M is ridiculous (Score:2)
Re:GPL vs BSD (Score:2, Insightful)
Your "experiment" has already been done: linux IS the GPL case, and the various BSDs are the BSD case. If linux has been wildly more succesful than the BSD variants...
well...what does that tell you?
Suits and PHBs have heard about Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and the older uber-geeks often prefer the BSDs. However there is much more hype about Linux and the suits and PHBs have heard about Linux. In short, Linux may be an easier sell for some application for political reasons, not technical reasons. Welcome to the real world.
Re:GPL vs BSD (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that the people who have contributed to Linux have specified the GPL. They do this, because in return they get anyone else's improvements to their code, and they also benefit from the entire GPL community. It isn't altruism.
It's interesting to note that Linux picked up a large set of talented developers very quickly. When Linux was starting up, BSD was mired in some legal battles, which certainly hampered it. But since then, developers have worked on GPL projects like Linux more than on BSD-licensed projects. There are many possible explanations for this, but it's a strong indicator that the GPL is more attractive to developers.
Re:GPL vs BSD (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted it does happen (as in the case of apple) but it is kindof enforced under the GPL and I think that gives the developers some solice that they wouldn't have under a BSD style license.
How would you feel if someone took your work, made a change or two and sold it as their own? I'd be pretty pissed.
Re:Afraid of a little competition? (Score:3, Insightful)
You confuse investment with worth (Score:3, Insightful)
You confuse investment with worth. Companies fail to recover their investment costs every day because the market says their product/service is not worth that much. Would you value MS Windows at how much MS has spent on it?