Because of the GPL, Linux has companies like Red Hat committing 25% of the new code base. Companies have to improve the product, and Linux can evolve without direct funding.
There's two routes for money to take:
1. People donate money to the FreeBSD Foundation, which then funds FreeBSD development.
2. People pay for RHEL, and then RedHat uses that money to fund Linux development.
Is there really any significant difference between these?
Colin's statement was in the context of the question of BSD vs. GPL licensing.
RedHat's model it's clearly more effective than simple charity, but I don't see a difference between RedHat and any other OSS-reliant contributing vendor. As an example, Juniper funds FreeBSD development based on sales/support of their high-end networking products, and contributed the MIPS port included in FreeBSD 8:
The main difference is that these companies make their money by incorporating FreeBSD into their products, are not required to provide all the source to their products, and thus can contribute back improvements as they see fit.
There's two routes for money to take:
1. People donate money to the FreeBSD Foundation, which then funds FreeBSD development.
2. People pay for RHEL, and then RedHat uses that money to fund Linux development.
Is there really any significant difference between these?