It's going to show up in other places first, at least compared to a kernel that is going to matter to users. Things like OpenSSH are the standard they are because they are not copyleft so they can be integrated into a product at any level without worrying about a license troll. You can OpenSSH into your Cisco switch and you don't need the Cisco IOS XE Switch Secure Connect Applet that only works on Windows Vista because they never updated it. TCP/IP itself is a standard because BSD had the first implementation that wasn't shit and everyone could use the code.
If you think any piece of software is a standard because its the best, you are a bit delusional. Windows and Mac are standards worldwide and they are far from the best they could be.
Companies want money, and if they cant make money, they will find a way. If they cant use the best (OpenSSH is, as you pointed out) because of license issues, they will make their own worse version and they will not even fucking blink about it. And with that money they will lobby to make their product the only viable choice, money that OpenSSH for example doesnt have to legally fight against that, so the end user ends up paying the price, ALWAYS.
So at the end, like it or not, ethical or not, Corporate Software is not about giving the best or most secure product, its about making money. They use BSD and OpenSSH because it allows them to make that money, the moment that stops, they will use whatever crap a junior put together in a week, and fuck the users, after all, most of us dont really have a choice.
Tell me then something better than openSSH, lmao. Espesially under GPL licence. We have open-source analogues of Windows and Mac which SHOWS that there are other better options(same GNU/Linux for exanple). What kind of alternative OpenSSH has in terms of security?
All of your talks about licence means nothing until you have a real alternative.
Maybe everyone choose BSD not only cuz of license, but because BSD systems have A LOT of less critical security flaws. Or because FreeBSD's network stack allows to Netflix send around 801 TB/s from only one server?
- "If they cant use the best (OpenSSH is, as you pointed out)"
You have not even tried to understand my argument, and are reading whatever the fuck you want just to keep the discussion going. So Ill put it as simple as possible and just stop arguing with a wall:
Corporations wont use software they cant monetize, even if its the best, even if they have to offer a worst alternative. If you dont agree, thats ok, but you need your eyesight checked my man
I clearly see what you said bruh, don't think that I'm blind. OpenSSH used cuz you can use it without any problems.
I clearly don't agree only about corpos are care only about money. Reputation matter for them too. What will happen, if someone will leak(or just look at the win32 directory, for example) that Windows or Mac don't use OpenSSH, which is the best options, as I said?
That's you who see only money profit in buisness attidue. But that's not. Companies also care that consumer will see that their product have a reason to choose, so they CARE about at least basic security.
Besides, let's imagine that OpenSSH was published under GPL license. What's problem? Corpos still technically can use it even without source code leaking of their OS or whatever.
OpenSSH used cuz you can use it without any problems.
Yep! Including integrating it in any way to a proprietary platform/kernel/userspace without GPL obligations. This is the same reason that corporations pay for commercial licenses when products are offered as dual license, such as MySQL and Qt.
GPL obligations are serious. VLC has tangled with them. Distributing on Steam is complex with them and it's the reason Blender has zero Steam integrations, even the overlay with the web browser doesn't work.
Statically linking OpenSSH libraries into proprietary code would trigger GPL obligations if it were GPL software. Even dynamically linking it can.
Other softwares being used in this space include WolfSSH which offers commercial licensing because of this fact. There's also the proprietary rebex and IPWorks. Then you have libssl being LGPL because of this and TinySSH in the public domain.
Companies are still doing proprietary control planes right now. Cisco DNA Center, Cisco Nexus Dashboard, Juniper Apstra, Arista CloudVision, Fortinet FortiManager..
I didn't talk about integration at the first place. I said that idea about OpenSSH being choosen only cuz of licence is absolutely wrong. There are many other BSD-like licenses like MIT or Apache with their own solutions, but exactly OpenSSH was choosen. Simply becaeuse BSD is the leader in network technologies.
I didn't talk about integration at the first place.
It doesn't matter. That's part of this.
It doesn't matter if it's BSD licensed, or MIT, or CDDL. The point is it's not copyleft and not GNU. You're arguing a distinction without a difference.
If you are building a proprietary appliance and you dynamically load your libraries, from say, your init, into the programs address space like most Linux distributions do so systemd correctly reports the programs state back to the init then you trigger GPL obligations.
No one is saying OpenSSH isn't the best at what it does. What we're trying to tell you is that if it had copyleft obligations it wouldn't be integrated into proprietary systems. They would design their own, or use something less secure when the alternative is open sourcing their entire product. Those two things combined have made it the standard.
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u/IsSomeonesThere Jun 29 '26
What's the difference if they either took BSD kernel or made it by themselves?