Hi Steve,
I think we're still talking past each other since you're using examples
that make my point and not yours as I perceive it . . . .
MediaWiki uses the GNU Free Documentation License which allows for both
commercial and non-commercial use. This is precisely what I am arguing for.
I intensely dislike GPL because it is specifically designed to *prevent*
commercial use. For me, this is a total non-starter and I will not participate
in any project that starts out by intentionally excluding a large percentage of
the potential development base. I consider such exclusion to be rampant
bigotry and stupidity.
The specific question that I asked you was why GPL as opposed to one of the
other more *Friendly* Open Source licenses like Berkeley or Apache?
I will also dispute your contentions that:
a.. GPL users are the most highly motivated members of the open source and
b.. That it is the fact that a product is GPL (as opposed to the mere fact of
it's existence or it's open source nature) that prevents commercial firms from
entering an *occupied* market niche
The fact that you are open source is *at best* a mixed blessing for me, if
not totally useless, because I consider your product to be virtually as
unusable as Richard's because of your licensing. He has rational economic
reasons for his stance. It's my impression that all you have is some misguided
altruism (as in, altruism is wonderful but you're so misguided that you're not
succeeding at being altruistic).
----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen Reed
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 12:05 AM
Subject: Re: [agi] SAFAIRE project
Mark wrote:
I wonder if you could clarify why you insist upon GPL as opposed to a
Berkeley-type or Apache-type license? I believe very strongly that both ends
of the open source to commercial *spectrum* are entirely unreasonable and that
there is a reasonable middle ground where we all can live and do what we need
to do. GPL is *deliberately* way too far on the open source side of the
spectrum.
I insist on the GPL for me (i.e. Texai) for reasons that I'll briefly mention
in a moment, but I will not argue the wrongness of any other AGI project's
licensing plans. What license I should use was vetted somewhat in this forum
about a year ago. My post to Richard Loosemore, on the news that his work is
not open source, saddens me as Texai will not be able exchange with him any of
our released components. But Richard has his reasons and that's OK.
The GPL is indeed viral by design, with the intent by its authors that it
become pervasive. I agree with this idea but one can easily find better
advocates than me to debate it. Rather, I am using the GPL for code, and the
GNU Free Documentation License for content, to be as compatible as possible
with the most highly motivated members of the open source, collaborative
knowledge-building movement, in which legions of volunteers create great works,
widely used, for the common good. My exemplar is MediaWiki for software, and
Wikipedia for content creation, governance, and content building by volunteers.
Here is another one of the reasons that I use the GPL, as stated in my first
blog post a year ago:
Contrary to naive intuition, the GPL precludes a lot of competition.
Commercial firms rarely enter a market niche that is initially dominated by a
freely available GPL product that meets customer needs.
-Steve
Stephen L. Reed
Artificial Intelligence Researcher
http://texai.org/blog
http://texai.org
3008 Oak Crest Ave.
Austin, Texas, USA 78704
512.791.7860
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription
-------------------------------------------
agi
Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/
Modify Your Subscription:
http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=98558129-0bdb63
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
