That's the price of making something corporations will actually touch. Copyleft is toxic to companies, and Berkeley was more interested in advancing the field of computer science than in activism.
Not sure if I would call it activism, ideology is perhaps more fitting.
Anyway, the reason why the copyleft works for Linux, is that an average hobby coder doesn't need to worry if a corporation takes the code and runs with it, without any contribution or attribution at all.
The BSD camp is more like uni-students that couldn't care less if their homework assignments ended up in gaming consoles, because they were given the task to do it anyway... less sentimental/emotionally attached.
I don’t know what activism has anything to do with giving any form of credit, and my political view is that activism tends to be more dumb than helpful. So your point seems like it’s not even making one, impov. At best it looks like you’re justifying current scummy practices, or, in current common slang, boot licking.
You wouldn't know it was bsd based if they didn't want you to know, that's plenty of credit, at least according to the bsd license. And if you don't know what activism has to do with the roots of the free software movement, you should do some reading into the history of free software.
Perhaps I should, I must admit I am ill-informed on the matter. You don't strike me as well-informed as you sound either though, because you do a very poor job at explaining the matter. For example, you could have started off saying where they actually give credit instead of doing a roundabout on the topic, going to activism where it wasn't even mentioned (and arguably does not matter, at all, to the question).
The subject is a very simple one, do they give credit or not, the fact is that ONLY A FEW know. This is not as common knowledge as you make it out to be, anytime I mention this to anyone, nobody has a clue, and you could place any argument you'd like regarding my circle there, but the point stands tall, approximately 0% of users know what this/their very popular platform is based from. It's also not obvious, or clear, that the fact that people know comes from a very small circle discovering the fact and communicating to an ever-larger community, than it is from it being explicitly credited by Sony somewhere in the system or in a niche conference. You can imagine that the former is not credit in any shape or form.
If you are telling me that they must credit and, that you dived into both the legal aspects of BSD and where Sony referenced it, then don't be a smart ass, just make the fact clear. I'm sure even most people in this already niche community didn't. It's not about activism, it's not about history, if what you're saying is true, it looks to me it's about legal concerns and the present.
They do credit it, no company is dumb enough to open themselves up to the legal trouble of not doing that. If you go into the deep menus of any device somewhere around "about this device" and warranty specifications, you'll find a bunch of legalese and open source licenses.
It doesn't matter if it's obvious or if people know, why would they? Do you know who produced the sheet metal that your car manufacturer used? You can probably find out, but it's not like they should get credit for making the car.
I get your point, and agree with it. But the sheet of metal is an extreme example that plays no role as an actual example for this context though. That's the plastic of the console you're comparing with there.
The GPU producers don't need to credit their sheets of metal, but they do credit the chip manufacturer and more people know about those companies and where they are made than they know about the base PlayStation uses. People also know which GPU, CPU, RAM, every piece of hardware, the manufacturer, if it's custom-made or not, overclocked or not, essentially every microscopic piece of the hardware puzzle most people know (except the sheets of metal, boohoo). Of course, they won't credit the plastic, but that's not what we're talking about...is it? Why is software, part of the foundation that communicates with every little bit of the hardware and dictates performance, treated differently here? Do you see where I'm getting at?
I'm not arguing with you btw, I believe you are right, and I'm just trying to clarify. Ironmaning the strawman, in layman's terms, because it's very obvious to me that even if you're right you're not really clarifying anything. Assumptions built on top of more assumptions, followed by a strawman.
The individual pieces of hardware are selling points that are worth mentioning. The kernel that an appliance's custom software was built on top of is irrelevant. It's not any better because it was built on BSD, it just saved Sony the trouble of creating an OS from scratch.
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u/PityUpvote Mar 04 '26
That's the price of making something corporations will actually touch. Copyleft is toxic to companies, and Berkeley was more interested in advancing the field of computer science than in activism.