It was Microsoft that came and ate public domain software&#x27;s lunch, not GNU.  GNU and the GPL were not needed until aggressive copyright enforcers such as Microsoft came on the scene.  Bill Gates wrote a famous rant calling anyone that shares code a thief, essentially.  The GPL was a reaction to that attitude and has saved the culture of sharing code.<p>If most people defaulted to sharing code like was done pre-Microsoft then BSD would be fine.  Read RMS&#x27;s rant that is linked above.  He&#x27;s still at defending against &quot;adversaries&quot; of Freedom.  This is war!<p>OK, so even MS is now open sourcing (some of) their code.  Maybe it&#x27;s not &quot;war&quot; anymore, but you need to understand the history a little.