Yes it does make it very bad for business but good for customers/competition :D. For example the site I created made $5 million in 2 months, why in the world would I want that source code to get into the wrong hands?
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Wikus van de Merwe < dupakrop...@googlemail.com> wrote: > I'm not sure if looking at the problem of license from the business point > of view is reasonable. If Bruno's goal was to make the business people > happy, he would put his software into the public domain. But I'm guessing > he is more interested in getting some help from others and maybe building a > small community around the project. In my opinion this works best when code > is collectively own and protected from abuse (e.g. proprietary forks). > > The assumed connection between the number of users and a scale of > contributions does not sound right to me. Depending on the chosen license > there would be different number and type of contributions. Non-copyleft > license doesn't encourage contribution, it encourages the use. The code can > be taken by everyone who will leave an attribution note for exchange, but > usually not more than that. Unless the rate of development of the project > is very high, the business would always prefer to fork a project and > maintain proprietary changes on their own, over a struggle with upstream > integration. Copyleft license encourages the contribution, as it protects > the code from being abused, so no risk of being taken advantage of and more > likely that some developers will join you. On the users side, however, it > scares of "the integrators", people who have a number of different pieces > of code that they don't want to or can't release as a free software. > > The question that remains is if the copyleft licenses can be used by > business at all? Let's limit the discussion to the most common case of > "customizers", people who adapt software to the needs of their clients > (e.g. making extensions or plugins) or use it to build custom products > (e.g. websites). Now, we need to remember that when the work is being > released, the license is between the business and its client. Not between > the business and the entire world. So the freedoms of the software are > granted to the client only and it is up to him to decide if he wants to > distribute the software any further. If he does, only then he will be > bounded by the copyleft clause to do it on the same terms. It doesn't > matter if it is AGPL, GPL, LGPL or BSD, the effect here is the same. The > only difference is the case of deploying the software on a server, which > according to AGPL is a form of distribution and would require making the > source code available upon request. However, in practice it is not always a > concern, e.g. when the target deployment happens in the intranet. > > Saying that legal department avoids GPL or AGPL and not saying *why* is > not very convincing. Argument from authority is not enough. I could agree, > that AGPL might be not very convincing as it seems to give away for what > the customer has paid to everyone. However, you have to remember that > potential competition is still bounded by the same license. They could copy > your customer's website and to distinguish themselves add some extra > features, but at the end they will have to release those changes on AGPL > too. Now, nothing stops your customer from using what they did on his > website. I dare to say, this would create a fast progressing market with > lots of competition. Fair competition, without any artificial market > barriers. So does it make sense to demonise it as bad for bussiness? > -- -- Regards, Bruce Wade http://ca.linkedin.com/in/brucelwade http://www.wadecybertech.com http://www.warplydesigned.com http://www.fitnessfriendsfinder.com
