begin  quoting Todd Walton as of Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 06:36:36PM -0500:
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 5:55 PM, SJS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > The GPL discourages* businesses from producing software
> 
> Google put $5.6 million into this year's Summer of Code.  Red Hat just
> reported $500 million quarterly profits, and they make plenty of GPLd
> software.  IBM makes GPLd code.  Sun makes GPLd code, and god knows
> they're even stodgier than IBM these days.
> 
> I don't see how the GPL is discouraging business from producing
> software, and I don't see how we should care if it is.

Google sells advertisements, but their core codebase is not GPL'd so
far as I've heard, but strictly proprietary. I'm sure you will gleefully
correct me if I've been misinformed here.

RedHat packages up open-source software and does its best to make it
more complicated.  We'd be better off if they stopped. Please, make them
stop!

IBM sells training, and releases the crap under the GPL, and keeps the
nominally useful stuff to itself.  Including IBM in your list is like
pointing at GM and saying "they produced the EV-1, they're a green
company!" ... technically correct, but laughable all the same.

Sun sells hardware. Why they're open-sourcing code I don't know,
except perhaps they don't want the sharks to get at it when they
finally go under.

Software is practically a side-effect of these companies.  That's one
possible economic model, but personally, I don't much like the idea of
working for a megacorp.  Software development as ditch-digging -- it
doesn't pay as a careeer, but it's done anyway when necessary.

How many <20 employee software development shops are out there
releasing code under the GPL?

-- 
Some people still need to look up words like 'discourage' in the dictionary.
Stewart Stremler


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