On Tue, 08 May 2007 09:26:57 +0530, Sandip Bhattacharya said:
>> So, my objection is to the throttling of the supply side, by keeping
>> the enhancements from the community. With the GPL, if the demand goes
>> high enough, others can come in to supply to same service, or people
>> can help themselves -- since the supply of the enhancement code is
>> not stifed.
> I see a flaw in that theory. GPL allows for people to make changes to
> the code and keep it to themselves as long as they don't further
> distribute it.
> How is that completely different from a closed source company making
> enhancements in BSD and selling it further without disclosing the
> changes to the community?
Well, duh, the distribution. The reason someone distributes
code is because they get something out of it -- money, reputation,
etc. Making the source inaccessible while reaping the benefits of the
distribution, preventing other people from further enhancing the code,
and thus hoarding all the benefits, is what people find objectionable.
> Before you jump on it, I am not disputing that the users who bought
> this software might have lost their freedom. I am only pointing out
> that in both cases, others have the freedom to still carry on from the
> point when the source is available and free to use for public.
I prefer not to have forks with benefits that leverages my work,
while preventing me from using the enhancements in my future work. My
work, my rules -- I have no interest in letting people hoard benefits
from things based on my work and taking ti into a dead end, community
collaboration-wise.
> If you consider the closed source company and its customers to be one
> independent entity (practically, this customer is probably not open to
> open source software in any case), how do their actions impact the
> rest of the community around the BSD style licenced software? As you
> mentioned, if demand is high enough, people can still help themselves
> to the last version of the open source software.
But this is a fallacy. More and more people are open to free
software -- as long as it is accessible, and allows them to do what
they want. I am not giving up on the customers as someone who will
never be a part of the community.
Again, people who want to leverage the blood, sweat, and tears
of free software developers should not hoard all the benefits of the
distribution, especially if they hide any hint of who did the heavy
lifting.
> So you might ask, what is the incentive to keep enhancing the BSD
> software? It is more or less the same incentive that drives GPL
> software owners, minus the constant bitterness against the closed
> source community. :)
I am not bitter about the closed source community. They can
set whatever licenses off the honest work that they do.
And no, neither is the incentive the same. My incentive is not
just to boost my ego with "see all the people using my work. Look at
how 31337 1 am!". My incentive is to help create a synergistic beast
far greater than the sum of its parts, where people and communities
perform duets of innovation, riffing off each others ideas and raising
the results far higher than individual efforts can be. The closed
source community creates compartments, barriers that prevent the
Tsunami from forming in the first place.
The BSD camp lacks vision, really, and can't see beyond
themselves and any paltry individual code offering. The synergy and
innovative riff can't be accomplished unless there is free sharing of
ideas and code -- think of it as a LASER pumping action. Any
individual atom giving off a photon is nothing as compared to the
number of photons that result from zillions of passes through the
medium of the coherent light, building up at each pass.
manoj
who really should go to bed now
--
It's better to burn out than it is to rust.
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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