Michael Kesper <[email protected]> writes: > I think there often is the harm to tell people they need to buy > licenses if they want to use the software "commercially" (it's the > case here and it was for Qt) or if they need support.
> This makes it look like Free Software could not be used commercially > or for mission critical goals. I'd consider this a real threat as > knowledge about Free Software still is pretty marginal in (higher > levels of) enterprises. I agree this is a harm they're perpetrating, likely on purpose since it probably makes some customers think they have no option to sell a work covered by the GPLv3 and thus more likely to pay for a non-free license. Interestingly, this harm isn't one that was complained about by the negative article the OP pointed us to. > > I prefer to think of the author as offering a free-software version > > of an otherwise closed product and so consider it a net benefit, but > > perhaps it makes an only-free version less worth developing. > > You also divide you user base (and such your potential developers). If some of them were intent on making non-free software, the base was already split; this does nothing to worsen that. -- \ “Computer perspective on Moore's Law: Human effort becomes | `\ twice as expensive roughly every two years.” —anonymous | _o__) | Ben Finney
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