On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 06:58:09AM +1100, Nathan Kelley wrote: > >I had never heard of this stumbling block (not to say that it wasn't > >there). But I've never heard of someone not wanting to use a GPL > >product because they weren't sure if the license would stand in court. > > It's a point commonly brought up by analysts when handing out advice > through c|net, BusinessWeek, InfoWorld, and friends.
Are those analysts all called "Rob Enderle" by any chance? Don't waste your time with him. Before I knew better, I actually thought to engage in discussion with im to see his point of view. He doesn't actually have a degree on either IT or Law, but considers himself an expert in both. He doesn't actually have any backing for his arguments, but that doesn't deter him. In our conversation I made an effort to be polite and I got the distinct impression that he was TRYING to make me mad (by being condescending or misrepresenting what I had said). > They don't put > stock into the GPL apparently because a high-priced team of lawyers > didn't create it. That is, of course, a silly point to make, but they > make it anyway. And people listen, including The People Who Matter� at > any given workplace. Sigh... Typical PHB. > >If Linux were BSD there would be no suit, simply because there would > >be no competition. > > I agree wholeheartedly with this point. And there wouldn't be thousands > of volunteers if they thought they were providing free labor for > others, particularly development houses that then released products > only for the Windows platform. Fortunately, we're not in that > dimension. I hadn't thought of that. That might be part of the reason why the GPL-based projects are so much larger than the BSD-based projects. Cheers, -- Daniel Carrera | OpenPGP KeyID: 9AF77A88 PhD grad student. | Mathematics Dept. | "To understand recursion, you must first UMD, College Park | understand recursion". -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
