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From: orc@pell.chi.il.us (Orc)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: GPL (was Re: Linux vs FreeBSD)
Date: 21 Dec 1995 20:50:14 -0800
Organization: The International Queer Conspiracy
Lines: 67
Message-ID: <4bdde6$ht@pell.pell.chi.il.us>
References: <489kuu$rbo@pelican.cs.ucla.edu> <4b2q7v$aht@kadath.zeitgeist.net> <4b67mo$19l@dyson.iquest.net> <4bbs2d$bet@snowdon.elsevier.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pell.pell.chi.il.us
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:31214 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:11025
In article <4bbs2d$bet@snowdon.elsevier.co.uk>, Paul Richards <dpr> wrote:
>I doubt very much that Sun would have picked a GPL'd src
>base as their OS because it would have been commercially unacceptable to
>give away their R&D budget to their competitors.
I dunno if it would have made much difference. It would have
been difficult to explain to the backers that, yes, Sun is really
just a hardware company and giving away the kernel sources would
not matter one whit when the value-added stuff still came only from
Sun, but I suspect that the people who founded Sun had enough of a
reputation so that they could have gotten away from it. It's all
moot, anyway, since they (and BSD) were restricted by the AT&T code
that BSD had in it.
>In my experience, and why I use a BSD license, you gain virtually nothing
>from imposing the restrictions on re-use that the GPL does. I've not
>suffered in any way from the fact that anyone can use my code to do whatever
>they want with.
I don't particularly like the GPL, but I wonder; there's a lot
of code out there that's fettered with that license, as well as a
fairly large cottage industry that's sprung up around one of the
more successful examples of GPLed code. The arguments about the
creeping socialism of the FSF, as well as the scope creep of the
GPL, will probably go on until hell freezes over, but it does seem
like the GPL works.
>Sit down and think about it
>rationally, if you're a software house and you release source code then how can
>you possibly stay in business when all your competitors have to do is pick up
>your sources and re-package them.
It depends on what your market is; the xBSD developers release
the sources to a lot of the stuff they do, and you certainly don't
see a thousand and one shops springing up to sell {x:a word in the
dictionary}BSD distributions and support. I know that when I buy
something, I don't (unless it's a game) buy it to get That Piece Of
Code -- I spend the money to buy support and to ensure that more
code comes from the place where the first code came from.
Personally, I think the reason why some houses refuse to
release source is because they don't want anyone else seeing the
gross hackery inside the applications they are trying to sell. I
certainly know that's why I'm never letting the sources to my vi
clone out to the world (it started out as a pascal application,
migrated to a pascal variant, then was translated to C. It's, um,
special.)
>I'm curious why the Linux advocates are so strongly against the BSD license,
Some of the Linux advocates are strongly against the BSD
license. Some aren't, and (well, I don't know if I'm so much a
Linux advocate as a free Unix advocate) prefer to release sources
under the clearer and saner BSD style of copyright. I don't think
it makes any difference to me if I am compelled to release the
sources of an application that includes code from the FSF. (that
stuff is, after all, their code and if I find the copyright
restrictions unacceptable, I simply don't use their property in
the product.)
____
david parsons \bi/ And it makes for amusing religious wars.
\/