Tim Scanlon wrote: > The GPL is crap, I hope to god it doesn't get used. Corporations violate it > all the time, developers don't bother to read it, and it's an awful license > to use if you want to feed yourself with your efforts. > The thing I find mot odd about GPL is that if you work in a company that is quite big - but not so big as to have different business units for tax purposes - then it gives you a free ride. At least it does if you allow linking to non-externally-distributed code as well as 'mere usage'. But if you're the last of the garage developers, you're screwed, or at least liable to get infected. Sort of 'steal from the poor and give to the rich'. It doesn't do anything to help SMEs with no internal resources who desperately need a lively small ISV environment to buy from. No problem for corporates that can afford to hire contractors like me to get what the need though.
It just seems upside down to me, at least in terms of how I think 'power to the people' needs to be delivered to avoid a widening have/have not divide. You can't expect the guy running a cornershop to join a developer community but he still needs accounts, payroll, and possibly ecommerce, and he can't possibly be expected to pay for their development axcept as a share where the total cost is amortized across a lot of users. I think the underlying problem is that it tries to give freedoms that some users don't all need, to all users, and in so doing can make it hard for small providers (that some users do need, because they can't afford to pay for the whole cost of custom development) to turn a dollar by spreading their R&D across a number of clients. I think the problematic right that's transferred is that the receiver of the customised software can effectively compete with the customiser (or at least gut their business case) and copy it on to *anyone*. If you could conceive a license that requires all source to be provided to 'customers' of a perpetual basis (ie cut out all the escrow issues, and give them free reign for further customisation - where they can share maintenance with other 'customers' but not compete with the provider) - then everyone involved can get what they _need_. Its unfortunate that the simple 'non compete' that makes it practical also makes it a non-free license, despite that customers having the freedoms they actually need as non-technology companies. Just not the ones the FSF say they must have. Oh well. Never mind. There's more to life than 'open source'. JAmes _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
