David N. Welton wrote:
Justin Erenkrantz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
What I wonder is how many of those authors/copyright-holders have
actually read the GPL and understand what it really means. --
justin
Probably not the details, but on the other hand, the concept of the GPL is clever, and the idea of 'not getting ripped off' appeals to people.
The appeal thing here is questionable. I was in a meeting yesterday with the CTO of a very very large system integration group and we were discussing open source. The CTO in question had lots of positive things to say about open source along with two problems:
1. open-source is free and that is a problem for department managers because this means they loose budget - it is simply better to place an order for 200k or 800k for a product with support because if and when the shit hits the fan, it is transferable, and your department maintains its budget
2. on the pragmatic front - open-source means you have to have the resources to be able to continue independently (technically and legally) irrespective of the direction taken by the majority. And this is where the crucial aspect comes in - if I have to maintain a product that has open source dependencies - and if the open source base changes in a manner incompatible with by usage, I have to continue to maintain the base independently of the OS community - this means a fork with all of the comensurate technical overhead - not to mention the potential legal consequences - legal consequence means problems - problems mean expenses and internal escalation - i.e. - back to the question - is it better to go with a commercial solution (a.k.a. problem transference) or take responsibility (a.k.a. internal responsibility)?
Cheers, Steve.
--
Stephen J. McConnell mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.osm.net
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