Which is what makes Linux kernel stand out, as we can see by Sony and Apple contributions upstream.
Had BSD not been busy with AT&T lawsuit, all major UNIXes would probably still be around, consuming whatever was produced out of BSD like the networking code and OS IPC improvements over AT&T UNIX.
Instead sponsoring Linux kernel became the plan B, as means to reduce their UNIX development costs.
> Commercial use began when Dell and IBM, followed by Hewlett-Packard, started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft's monopoly in the desktop operating system market
Ironically the major contributor to many GNU/Linux critical components, Red-Hat, is now an IBM subsiduary, recouping that investment beyond doing only Aix.
It is no accident that all FOSS OSes that came after Linux, none of them has adopted GPL, as big corporations would rather not be obliged by it.
Of course big corporations would rather not be obliged by the GPL. But my feeling is that, if we give them the option to grab the code without contributing back their improvements, they would just do that. In the long run, this risks harming the OSS community, as developers would feel like big corps are being leeches and profiting out of their work without giving anything back.
After all, the GPL forces to contribute back only if you modify and distribute a modified version of the software (the AGPL modified this point, to account for cloud services). A corporation that isn't modifying GPL'd code or isn't redistributing the modified binaries, doesn't incur any additional burden for using a software distributed under the GPL.
It is no accident that Google has removed everything GPL out of Android, falling short of the Linux kernel, and they haven't done the final step with Fuchsia/Zircon mostly due to what appears internal politics.
Had BSD not been busy with AT&T lawsuit, all major UNIXes would probably still be around, consuming whatever was produced out of BSD like the networking code and OS IPC improvements over AT&T UNIX.
Instead sponsoring Linux kernel became the plan B, as means to reduce their UNIX development costs.
> Commercial use began when Dell and IBM, followed by Hewlett-Packard, started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft's monopoly in the desktop operating system market
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
> 1998: Many major companies such as IBM, Compaq and Oracle announce their support for Linux.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux
Ironically the major contributor to many GNU/Linux critical components, Red-Hat, is now an IBM subsiduary, recouping that investment beyond doing only Aix.
It is no accident that all FOSS OSes that came after Linux, none of them has adopted GPL, as big corporations would rather not be obliged by it.