John Burton wrote:
The side effect of the unneeded restriction of $90k dollars for a
Mercedes is that I don't get to drive one. Cry me a river.
Cooperation is the cost of reusing GPL licensed software.
Close your eyes for a moment and picture a big red tag that reads:
$ COOPERATION
That's the GPL.
Okay, here are a couple of questions I haven't seen answered. There are
several "license" schemes put forth for Open Source software. GPL and
BSD are two that come to mind immediately. The purpose of "open source"
is to counter the traditional closed source model of software.
o Which OSS license scheme does the best job of promoting "cooperation"
and reuse of the software? why?
This has been debated endlessly, but if you look at the historical
examples I think you have to conclude that the evolution and reuse of
code is an organic process and not very predictable - and that much of
the best currently available open source code has gone through versions
that were non-open for some periods of time. Using the GPL prohibits
that potential step in development where commercial funding might be
contributing to subsequently available code - as well as any
improvements that might come from components under different licenses or
developers who refuse to encumber their work with the GPL restrictions.
o Programmers live in the real world. They have to do mundane things
like pay rent/mortgages, pay bills (heat, gas, internet connection,
etc). Which OSS license scheme does the best job of supporting the
programmer ? (if the programmer has to spend 1/2 their time fund-raising
to support their programming, then is it worthwhile?) Why?
You need to propose a business model before that question can be
answered in the context of open source. If you are talking about
selling/supporting a product while releasing the code, the GPL
restrictions that limit the ways the code can be improved work to your
advantage and if you own the copyright to the entire code base you can
offer a different commercial license for some uses. But, if you go out
of business, the released GPL'd code is still stuck with the
restrictions that limit the ways it can be re-used.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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