On Friday, 7 February 2020 at 16:00:07 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
On Friday, 7 February 2020 at 15:05:13 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
True companies have convinced themselves that only licences
that allow stealing of others' intellectual work are
acceptable to business, but then that is the point, they can
steal the intellectual work with impugnity.
A rant of my own:
The push against the GPL is mostly by those who want free
software to mean "free labor". GPL software can be dual
licensed. Companies can pay for an alternative licensing
arrangement if it's that valuable to them. Instead they want
"free" software that allows them to avoid payment while
imposing restrictions on how others use the software.
How do you pay for an alternative licensing arrangement when
there are a gazillion contributors some of whom are untraceable
and when in practical terms any one of those saying no might make
it in practical terms impossible? Software can be dual licensed,
but it often isn't, particularly with community developed
software.
Most software is internal software I think. But a company needs
to make decisions strategically in the face of uncertainty.
Suppose you are considering a library for internal use and not
planning to redistribute. But business is uncertain. Maybe it
could be you want to redistribute your software to a future
partner. Now if you use a viral license library that doesn't
give you an option to pay for it then you are shutting off that
option.
