On 5/24/06, Dieter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The developers and end-users need the thing to be well documented.
The business wants protection from competition using that documentation
without paying for its creation. This is exactly the problem what
copyright and patent protection were invented to solve.
So... maybe what you want here is a conventional copyright, rather than
the GPL, the so-called "copyleft". Or perhaps a conventional copyright
that automagically converts to GPL after 'x' period of time.
Whenever I suggest this, GPL zealots flame me into submission. If I'm
going to market to Free Software users, it appears that I have to
appease this very vocal minority. True, most of them don't understand
the business issues, but they cause me so much bad PR that it's not
worth my time to resist. It's a Borg thing, I guess.
The irony is that I'm a GPL zealot and have always intended to release
the whole thing under GPL eventually. But that doesn't seem to get
through, somehow. :)
However, in practice, my plan is exactly how you described it. I will
put a conventional copyright on it that converts at a later time to
GPL. And if I can get a law firm to hold onto it pro bono and release
it for me at a later date, I'd be happy to hand it over to them. I
would like to do this as a statement of good faith that I'm not going
to go back on my word.
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