Per Bothner wrote:
Gianugo Rabellino wrote:
Their point was to disallow software from becoming proprietary, yet this license is actually used as a trojan horse by people that (in full right!) want to have a commercial return from their effort.
Trojan horse implies something sneaky and underhanded.
Oh yes, and despite my poor English this is exactly what I mean. But don't take offense from that, I'm really not blaming you for your more than legitimate desire to make some money out of your effort. Buying the GPL should mean buy a philosphy, at least from RMS words. This philosopyhy boild down to "everyone must have free access to human knowledge" (BTW, I really do think that most of the software is not a big deal wrt to "science" and "knowledge - agreed, this is definitely not your case).
Now, what you are saying is that it's OK to you that someone takes the software and modifies it in a proprietary way, as long as you get some money from it. Isn't this colliding with the GNU spirit? Isn't it a trojan horse using something in a way it wasn't intended to be?
Companies might hire you to work on BSD software, but they do that with GPL sofwtare as well. It's a pragmatic but unanswered question as to which will "improve the world" more. There is no evidence to support the belief that the GPL is detrimental to that goal, so I have to consider a secondary question as well: which is more likely to improve my own financial well-being. (I have expensive mortgages to pay. I can't afford to be too charitable with my most precious commodity - my time.)
OK, and I perfectly agree with you. We have different views but heck, I do believe that there is room enough for the both of us. :-) I just find funny hearing St.Ignucius preach about changing the IP world and nurturing potentially close softwares in its backyard. Boy, do I like that! :-)
Ciao,
-- Gianugo Rabellino Pro-netics s.r.l. http://www.pro-netics.com
