Is GPL. Why is that you might wonder? Well, if you ask me the problem isn’t GPL itself but rather the fact that Linux suffers from the NIH problem. NIH stands for “Not Invented Here” and it’s made up from the fact that GPLv2 won’t let you link in code that isn’t also under GPL. This isn’t the fact with for example LGPL or the BSD License. Because of this the people working on the Linux kernel are forced to reinvent the wheel. Again and again and again… There are so many really good programs and solutions out there (ZFS and DTrace to name two) that can’t be properly used and integrated into Linux because of this.

It’s a shame, indeed. This is partly why I think projects like FreeBSD are likely to grow. It’s licensed under the BSD License and doesn’t suffer from this. If you’re a freedom fighter like Stallman this is blasphemy, but for realists like myself it’s just a matter of being able to use really good software. If that software happens to be free software it’s a big plus, but it doesn’t have to be licensed under GPL.