The stated reasoning behind this seems pretty vague to me, and this follows an increasingly common business pattern in the software industry: clone or fork an existing free software solution, and then fund it massively so that it pulls ahead of the original free software.
In the most extreme cases, i.e. FreeBSD->MacOSX, the free software is replaced by software under a non-free license. If there is mention of how libcrurl will be licensed, I missed it, but there's actually a subtler attack on free software which has happened with i.e. GCC->Clang or Konqueror->Safari/Chrome. What makes this attack subtle is that it allows companies to release under a free license, while not actually making any commitment to a free ecosystem. By providing massive amounts of funding and manpower to these projects, large companies can ensure that their version of the software remains dominant, and they get to choose what to include and exclude. This has predictable results: breaks in support for related free software[1] and pressuring the introduction of non-free components even in otherwise free browsers[2] after people have committed to the new, corporately-controlled platform.
As noted, I don't know what license this will be released under, or how this power will be used if they supersede the original curl tool. I'm just saying that projects like this should be seen as attacks on free software and viewed with suspicion.
Perhaps you should read the actual article for the image you linked, which mentions that Mac OS was synchronized with FreeBSD in 2003. The fact that this gets a one-line mention shouldn't be mistaken for belittling the effort involved in feature-syncing a mature operating system.
I wasn't sure of my memory, so I had checked my FreeBSD statement before I said it.
I did read the article, but "BSD layer synchronized with FreeBSD 5" somewhat late in the project didn't itself give me the impression it was derived from work in FreeBSD. That said, I appreciate the poke to go do some more work :)
#/media/File%3AUnix_timeline.en.svg){kind=link}
In the most extreme cases, i.e. FreeBSD->MacOSX, the free software is replaced by software under a non-free license. If there is mention of how libcrurl will be licensed, I missed it, but there's actually a subtler attack on free software which has happened with i.e. GCC->Clang or Konqueror->Safari/Chrome. What makes this attack subtle is that it allows companies to release under a free license, while not actually making any commitment to a free ecosystem. By providing massive amounts of funding and manpower to these projects, large companies can ensure that their version of the software remains dominant, and they get to choose what to include and exclude. This has predictable results: breaks in support for related free software[1] and pressuring the introduction of non-free components even in otherwise free browsers[2] after people have committed to the new, corporately-controlled platform.
As noted, I don't know what license this will be released under, or how this power will be used if they supersede the original curl tool. I'm just saying that projects like this should be seen as attacks on free software and viewed with suspicion.
[1] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365327
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/10/30/video-interoperabil... (note: OpenH264 is free as in beer not free as in freedom, a.k.a. gratis not libre).