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Re:"Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on softw... by chc on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @05:41PM (#4816710)
It seems hard to quantify. If everybody were using the BSD or Apache license instead of the GPL, would society be substantially different? My guess leans toward "A little different, but maybe not that much." Would BSD and Apache have caught on if Stallman hadn't been there? I don't know, but BSD at least predates GNU. Any answer would have to delve into the realm of historical fiction.
Re:"Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on softw... by geoka9 on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @06:46PM (#4816906)
> Would BSD and Apache have caught on if Stallman hadn't been there? I don't know, but BSD at least predates GNU.

Would _open source_ have caught on if Stallman (and GNU) hadn't been there? That's an interesting question.

Re:"Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on softw... by cwp on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @09:23PM (#4817256)
Of course it would have. It was pretty much inevitable once Internet access became wide-spread.
Re:"Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on softw... by SirDinosaur on Thursday November 22, 2012 @12:13AM (#4817575)
me thinks that is taking both the internet and open source for granted.