> I've never seen it that way. GPL gives the author great power and in > contrast to my ancient believe, the possibility to make money of his > work, because people "don't" want to gpl their derivative stuff.
That's theory. However, practice often is less trivial. 1. Licenses are for lawyers. Whenever you feel that someone uses your software and violates your license, you can hire a lawyer, give him the license and tell him to go to court. If you don't have appropriate resources, this won't happen. Lawyers specialized on this kind of stuff are expensive. Very expensive. 2. Licenses can be twisted. If someone uses my *Flash* project as a part of another project by loading a SWF at runtime, is that really covered by the GPL? As the SWF is not modified, Section 2 of GPL likely does not apply (or does it?). Well let's ask the lawyers and go back to 1. 3. Licenses scare away potential contributors and investors. Is the license you picked compatible to the license someone else uses? "My project is licensed under the 'Whatever Public License' - my lawyer said the GPL is not compatible to it and advised against using it unless you switch to 'Whatever Public License'". My main point is that most OS licenses are more or less worthless unless you have the resources (= lots of time and/or money) to go to court and fight for your rights. cheers, claus. _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
