Leave the XPers alone

[n0cmonkey]

Lucid and everyone else who wanted to debate the GPL vs. BSD vs. MS, let's do that here so the XP thread isn't as messy.

So what are everyone's opinions on big business accepting the BSD license over the GPL? Why is one licence better than the other? Will the GPL hold up in court? Has anyone used GPLed code and not open sourced it and gotten away with it?

The only request is that you read the other posts and think about what they say before you respond.

 

[lucidguy]

Different licences are good for different purposes. No license is "useless", there are good and bad places to use either BSD or GPL style licenses.

You already know why people prefer BSD, or why people prefer GPL, so there is no need to hash it out here once again.

A BSD license or a GPL license is no weaker or stronger than any other clickthrough or shrinkwrap software license. Microsoft couldn't challenge the legality of such licenses without voiding each and every one of their own software licenses. And that is the last thing they want to do.

It is very likely that countless people have used GPL'ed source code, and not open sourced the results. This is perfectly legal. You are only required to distribute the source code to a GPL-derived work if you distribute the work itself to the public. If you produce a GPL-derived work for your own personal use, and never distribute it, then you can keep your changes to yourself.

As for companies who are distributing GPL-derived work without acknowledging the GPL component, or without opening up their source, there are doubtless some cases of this happening. The IT world is too large for there to not be any crooks. But should any one of these programs become noticeably successful, it will come under scrunity, and low-level hackers (meaning hackers who are familiar with the barebones architectures of CPUs) will study the compiled code using a variety of tools including hex editors, string extractors, etc, and will find conclusive evidence of wrongdoing. It is then up to the FSF versus the guilty company to resolve this problem.

This sort of thing has already happened a few times, including an instant messenger company from India, and a company that makes video compression and editing software from the US. I believe both of these cases were settled out of court.

The moral of the story is that it is not smart to try to get away with trying to take advantage of the smartest group of programmers in the entire world.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< Different licences are good for different purposes. No license is &quot;useless&quot;, there are good and bad places to use either BSD or GPL style licenses.

You already know why people prefer BSD, or why people prefer GPL, so there is no need to hash it out here once again.

A BSD license or a GPL license is no weaker or stronger than any other clickthrough or shrinkwrap software license. Microsoft couldn't challenge the legality of such licenses without voiding each and every one of their own software licenses. And that is the last thing they want to do.

It is very likely that countless people have used GPL'ed source code, and not open sourced the results. This is perfectly legal. You are only required to distribute the source code to a GPL-derived work if you distribute the work itself to the public. If you produce a GPL-derived work for your own personal use, and never distribute it, then you can keep your changes to yourself.

As for companies who are distributing GPL-derived work without acknowledging the GPL component, or without opening up their source, there are doubtless some cases of this happening. The IT world is too large for there to not be any crooks. But should any one of these programs become noticeably successful, it will come under scrunity, and low-level hackers (meaning hackers who are familiar with the barebones architectures of CPUs) will study the compiled code using a variety of tools including hex editors, string extractors, etc, and will find conclusive evidence of wrongdoing. It is then up to the FSF versus the guilty company to resolve this problem.

This sort of thing has already happened a few times, including an instant messenger company from India, and a company that makes video compression and editing software from the US. I believe both of these cases were settled out of court.

The moral of the story is that it is not smart to try to get away with trying to take advantage of the smartest group of programmers in the entire world. >>



Yet this group of hackers you mention is not necessarily the richest group... So smart would all be in how you look at it.

I agree with the GPL for some things. If you want to put some code out there and you dont care if anyone ever uses it, yeah gpl is great. But why limit anyone with the license? Why take away the freedom of others? Why go around to sites that support MS just to bash it? Too many questions, not enough answers as always.

 

[lucidguy]

<< If you want to put some code out there and you dont care if anyone ever uses it, yeah gpl is great. But why limit anyone with the license? Why take away the freedom of others? Why go around to sites that support MS just to bash it? Too many questions, not enough answers as always. >>



Obviously, you do not agree with the GPL philosophy, which is your perogative. But this simply means that you cannot be part of our club.

If you want to be part of the GPL community, and use the fruits of our labor in a way that enriches your own programs, you are expected to collaborate back. Microsoft charges millions of dollars for this kind of privilege, and extends it to a very select few. We only charge cooperation. I believe that cooperation is a very low price to charge for letting a programmer tap into such a large body of high-quality peer-reviewed code and use this code for his own programs.

We charge absolutely nothing to let you run our code on your desktop, server, embedded system, watch, or toaster. (And there are examples of each of these running Linux.) Microsoft would charge hundreds of thousands of dollars in license fees for the equivalent privilege.

GPL doesn't take anything away from anyone. It makes a value proposition to software users, software makers, embedded system makers, system integrators, infrastructure providers, and other IT-related individuals and groups. You are free to take the value proposition or leave it. Obviously, the fact that companies as large as IBM, Gateway, Compaq, and HP have enthusiastically taken it, must say something about the worth of our value proposition. But no one is required to take it. Remember that if you don't like our rules, you don't get to play with our toys.

In a world without Microsoft and companies like Microsoft, a BSD-style license would be ideal. Unfortunately, such scumsuckers exist. Free Software proponents must therefore resort to protecting the integrity and freedom of their works using the GPL.

In short, GPL is a philosophy, and it makes a value proposition to people like you. Take it or leave it.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< If you want to put some code out there and you dont care if anyone ever uses it, yeah gpl is great. But why limit anyone with the license? Why take away the freedom of others? Why go around to sites that support MS just to bash it? Too many questions, not enough answers as always. >>



Obviously, you do not agree with the GPL philosophy, which is your perogative. But this simply means that you cannot be part of our club.

If you want to be part of the GPL community, and use the fruits of our labor in a way that enriches your own programs, you are expected to collaborate back. Microsoft charges millions of dollars for this kind of privilege, and extends it to a very select few. We only charge cooperation. I believe that cooperation is a very low price to charge for letting a programmer tap into such a large body of high-quality peer-reviewed code and use this code for his own programs.

We charge absolutely nothing to let you run our code on your desktop, server, embedded system, watch, or toaster. (And there are examples of each of these running Linux.) Microsoft would charge hundreds of thousands of dollars in license fees for the equivalent privilege.

GPL doesn't take anything away from anyone. It makes a value proposition to software users, software makers, embedded system makers, system integrators, infrastructure providers, and other IT-related individuals and groups. You are free to take the value proposition or leave it. Obviously, the fact that companies as large as IBM, Gateway, Compaq, and HP have enthusiastically taken it, must say something about the worth of our value proposition. But no one is required to take it. Remember that if you don't like our rules, you don't get to play with our toys.

In a world without Microsoft and companies like Microsoft, a BSD-style license would be ideal. Unfortunately, such scumsuckers exist. Free Software proponents must therefore resort to protecting the integrity and freedom of their works using the GPL.

In short, GPL is a philosophy, and it makes a value proposition to people like you. Take it or leave it. >>



I use GPL'ed software daily. Until my skills have progressed a bit I cannot avoid it. One of my problems with the GPL is the viral nature in which it FORCES all code around it to also be GPLed. I can take something from BSD licenced code, wrap it up, and have only that part of the code under the BSD licence. But if I take GPL code and try to put it into code under a different licence I have violated the GPL. Therefor I may have to reinvent the wheel because people who believe in the GPL will not play nice with others. So you gain this &quot;protection&quot; of the GPL while excluding GREAT talents... Linux has some great minds, but they ostracize many other great minds...

 

[lucidguy]

<< Linux has some great minds, but they ostracize many other great minds... >>



You are ostracizing yourself by refusing to pay the price that GPL charges to let you use GPL-licensed code. The price that GPL charges you is the very reasonable requirement that you make the source to your GPL-derived work available.

If you are not willing to pay this price, then you are forcing yourself to reinvent the wheel, and you have nobody but yourself to blame for your decision.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< Linux has some great minds, but they ostracize many other great minds... >>



You are ostracizing yourself by refusing to pay the price that GPL charges to let you use GPL-licensed code. The price that GPL charges you is the very reasonable requirement that you make the source to your GPL-derived work available.

If you are not willing to pay this price, then you are forcing yourself to reinvent the wheel, and you have nobody but yourself to blame for your decision. >>



But the problem would not exist if the GPL did not place such limiting constraints on the programmer.

 

[lucidguy]

<< But the problem would not exist if the GPL did not place such limiting constraints on the programmer. >>



Well, it does, and it does. I'm sorry that you don't like the GPL, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

You will notice that I changed my argument from the freedom argument to the value proposition argument. I realized that your idea of freedom and my idea of freedom differed remarkably on the outset, so there was no way to agree on conclusions if we didn't even agree on first principles. So I presented the GPL to you as a great value proposition - a great bargain - that gives you access to a mountain load of the highest quality code, in return for an absolutely unbeatable price that is unseen in the industry. But you refuse to accept the value proposition, and that's fine. No penguinistas are going to stalk you and give you a hard-sell on this. We must each make our own decisions and we must each learn to live with them.

Just to make sure that I don't drive you away completely from GPL-licensed code, I want to introduce you to the idea of cross-licensing. This is for certain cases where you absolutely cannot do without integrating a piece of GPL-licensed code in your program, and you absolutely cannot open the source to your GPL-derived program, for whatever reason. There is a legal solution to this conundrum.

What you need to do is you go to the copyright holder of the GPL-licensed code. This is often the author of the program, but may sometimes be the FSF. You tell them that you would like to use the code in question, and you are not willing to license the code under the GPL, so can they please cross-license the code to you under a different license. They may be willing to do this for a price. They may tell you that you and only you can use that piece and only that piece of code in such-a-such version of that program and later versions thereof, for, say, one million dollars. This is called cross-licensing, and as the copyright holder of the code in question, they are allowed to license the code under as many different licenses as they please. They would basically be making you another value proposition that is different from the GPL value proposition. It is up to you to decide whether this new value proposition is more acceptable to you, and it is up to you to take it or leave it.

Of course, it is also possible that the original author of the GPL-licensed code will refuse to cross-license the code to you. He holds the copyright to it, and he gets to decide how the code is licensed, and at what price. That is one of the perks that comes with copyright law.

In conclusion, we have what I believe is the best value proposition in the software industry, but you may disagree, and if you do, that's your choice, and I hope you do not live to regret it.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< Linux has some great minds, but they ostracize many other great minds... >>



You are ostracizing yourself by refusing to pay the price that GPL charges to let you use GPL-licensed code. The price that GPL charges you is the very reasonable requirement that you make the source to your GPL-derived work available.

If you are not willing to pay this price, then you are forcing yourself to reinvent the wheel, and you have nobody but yourself to blame for your decision. >>



I was just thinking about all of this for a moment and got to thinking about all of the open source licenses. You dont work with servers at all do you? I mean you couldnt... sendmail I believe is under a BSD license. BIND is under a BSD license. Dont like those daemons.... qmail is not under the GPL, djbdns is not under GPL... Apache is not under the GPL, perl is not under the GPL, mozilla is not under the GPL... I am sure there are lesser webservers and mail servers than the ones I mentioned, but sendmail is pretty standard along with BIND, and qmail and djbdns are the best alternatives (Although I dont think they should be alternatives, they should be standard).

 

[lucidguy]

The new BSD license is GPL compatible. I don't see what your problem is.

 

[Shudder]

Question about the cross-licensing..

If software d borrows from c, c from b, b from a..

If you're writer for D, wouldn't you need permission from A, B, AND C, not just C?

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< But the problem would not exist if the GPL did not place such limiting constraints on the programmer. >>



Well, it does, and it does. I'm sorry that you don't like the GPL, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

You will notice that I changed my argument from the freedom argument to the value proposition argument. I realized that your idea of freedom and my idea of freedom differed remarkably on the outset, so there was no way to agree on conclusions if we didn't even agree on first principles. So I presented the GPL to you as a great value proposition - a great bargain - that gives you access to a mountain load of the highest quality code, in return for an absolutely unbeatable price that is unseen in the industry. But you refuse to accept the value proposition, and that's fine. No penguinistas are going to stalk you and give you a hard-sell on this. We must each make our own decisions and we must each learn to live with them.

Just to make sure that I don't drive you away completely from GPL-licensed code, I want to introduce you to the idea of cross-licensing. This is for certain cases where you absolutely cannot do without integrating a piece of GPL-licensed code in your program, and you absolutely cannot open the source to your GPL-derived program, for whatever reason. There is a legal solution to this conundrum.

What you need to do is you go to the copyright holder of the GPL-licensed code. This is often the author of the program, but may sometimes be the FSF. You tell them that you would like to use the code in question, and you are not willing to license the code under the GPL, so can they please cross-license the code to you under a different license. They may be willing to do this for a price. They may tell you that you and only you can use that piece and only that piece of code in such-a-such version of that program and later versions thereof, for, say, one million dollars. This is called cross-licensing, and as the copyright holder of the code in question, they are allowed to license the code under as many different licenses as they please. They would basically be making you another value proposition that is different from the GPL value proposition. It is up to you to decide whether this new value proposition is more acceptable to you, and it is up to you to take it or leave it.

Of course, it is also possible that the original author of the GPL-licensed code will refuse to cross-license the code to you. He holds the copyright to it, and he gets to decide how the code is licensed, and at what price. That is one of the perks that comes with copyright law.

In conclusion, we have what I believe is the best value proposition in the software industry, but you may disagree, and if you do, that's your choice, and I hope you do not live to regret it. >>



I do not mind the GPL at all. I dont like linux, but that comes from a usability standpoint (what I use works well for me and I understand it better than I do linux). Different licenses are a good thing. Different beliefs are a good thing. Working together to fight for our place is the best future in my opinion. With the incompatibilities of the GPL and the BSD license this cannot happen to the degree that it is necessary. There should be alternatives to begging someone to be able to use thier code.

I do not know if there is a way but one possible solution would be if we could make a header or library file under the GPL (using someone else's work) and call that in a program licensed under a different license. It has to be possible right?

I do see a value in the GPL. The value I see is that not everyone agrees with my standpoint and the GPL may make them happy. The code I am interrested to write would be of more benefit if EVERYONE could get ahold of it and use it. And this is best accomplished by making the license a business friendly one. And if my code was thought superior and a linux programmer wanted to port my program to linux (if it did not work already) I would give the ok to license his version GPL. But with a couple of other restrictions, mostly we should work together and make them as compatible as possible which would mean sharing code between the BSD licensed version and the GPL licensed version without either having to switch licenses.

But anyways, when I argue that the BSD license is better I dont mean the GPL is sh*t, just that I dont agree with all of it. I think the GPL is great and I hope it lives on forever (along with the other open source licenses). But I think this can only be accomplished if we all work together.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< The new BSD license is GPL compatible. I don't see what your problem is. >>



But a BSD programmer could not take a GPL component and put it into his program WITHOUT making the rest of the code GPL.

 

[lucidguy]

There isn't enough information to properly answer this question. It depends on what license C used to license B, and what license B used to license A.

Cross-licensing is not done very often in the Free Software world, because it is an absolute hornet's nest due to the potential licensing conflicts similar to those you mentioned.

It is best to enter cross-licensing negotiations with a good Intellectual Property lawyer at your side. It would be money well spent.

Alternatively, just license stuff under the GPL. It's more convenient, *and* more ethical.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< There isn't enough information to properly answer this question. It depends on what license C used to license B, and what license B used to license A.

Cross-licensing is not done very often in the Free Software world, because it is an absolute hornet's nest due to the potential licensing conflicts similar to those you mentioned.

It is best to enter cross-licensing negotiations with a good Intellectual Property lawyer at your side. It would be money well spent.

Alternatively, just license stuff under the GPL. It's more convenient, *and* more ethical. >>



But more restrictive and less appealing to businesses

 

[lucidguy]

<< But a BSD programmer could not take a GPL component and put it into his program WITHOUT making the rest of the code GPL. >>



That's exactly what I said. The new BSD license is GPL compatible, but no version of the GPL license has ever been BSD compatible.

Software licensing is not commutative. A is compatible with B, does not imply B is compatible with A. It is a subset-superset relation.

As for wanting to write software under a business-friendly license, consider this: IBM, Gateway, Compaq, Sun and HP are all huge businesses, make tons of money, have incredible name recognition in a great number of markets, and they are all friendly with Linux. So obviously Linux is business friendly. The fact that some businesses have not chosen to be Linux friendly is due to a number of things: A GPL-incompatible (outdated) business plan based on selling infinitely reproducible bits, a lack of vision in upper management, a lack of talent in their engineering or programming department, or other reasons.

You obviously have put some thought into the question of licensing, and whatever license you end up picking, it will be because you feel comfortable with it, not because everyone else is using it. There is a lot of value in that. Sometimes I get the feeling that young programmers license everything they write under the GPL just because GPL is &quot;hip&quot; and &quot;with it&quot;, and their immature code ends up diluting the quality of the otherwise stellar GPL codebase. Programmers who pick their licenses due to forethought and conviction tend to be better visionaries and leaders, in my experience. And often better coders as well.

Regardless of which camp you choose, you will be an asset to that camp. I am hoping that you will choose the GPL camp, but GPL will not make any exceptions for you. It will require you to play by the rules as it does with everyone else. Knowing that, do as you will.

 

[Noriaki]

<< s for wanting to write software under a business-friendly license, consider this: IBM, Gateway, Compaq, Sun and HP are all huge businesses, make tons of money, have incredible name recognition in a great number of markets, and they are all friendly with Linux. So obviously Linux is business friendly. >>

Ah but what do all those companies have in common that a company like Microsoft does not share with them (research and development aside)? They are primarily hardware vendors. At work we just bought an IBM cluster of Linux machines. IBM could care less if someone re-uses their Linux version becuase they are making money on the hardware (and service contracts), thus to IBM it's useful becuase they can take a free OS, modify it slightly and use it. Doesn't cost them much to produce their OS, and they don't make money on it. They are fine with that.

Microsoft makes their money on software. If they let anyone take their code they lose money.



<< The fact that some businesses have not chosen to be Linux friendly is due to a number of things: A GPL-incompatible (outdated) business plan based on selling infinitely reproducible bits, a lack of vision in upper management, a lack of talent in their engineering or programming department, or other reasons. >>

Again that may be true of hardware companies. But just becuase a software company wants to make money doesn't make their licensing outdated, as you so &quot;elegantly&quot; put it.

Tell IBM they should open source their R&amp;D in hardware design, so any company can use it without paying IBM for their work. I don't think IBM would be very agreeable to that. And that's the equivilant of telling a company that deals primarily in software to distribute it's programs under GPL.
I'm sure Microsoft would be happy to give you hardware to run their OSes on if they could get it for free.
Much like IBM is happy to give you an OS for free so long as you buy their hardware.

GPL is only business friendly to certain kinds of businesses.

 

[Shudder]

About why GPL..

If I started making a program, I'd probably do the GPL because that's all I really know about right now. Even though I'm not out to make money for my program, I don't want some hack to just steal even my most basic code and then turn around and make something out of it and say it's all his own. You know that would happen, so I'd just protect myself in that way that I only knew how.

I'd feel guilty if I didn't make a program open source. I've used too many free programs to not do something back, and I'd rather have a decent functioning program that thousands of other people may have helped me with that we can ALL use rather than going about it all myself, trying to profit, and have it be worse than tons of other stuff out there. Bleh

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< But a BSD programmer could not take a GPL component and put it into his program WITHOUT making the rest of the code GPL. >>



That's exactly what I said. The new BSD license is GPL compatible, but no version of the GPL license has ever been BSD compatible.

Software licensing is not commutative. A is compatible with B, does not imply B is compatible with A. It is a subset-superset relation.

As for wanting to write software under a business-friendly license, consider this: IBM, Gateway, Compaq, Sun and HP are all huge businesses, make tons of money, have incredible name recognition in a great number of markets, and they are all friendly with Linux. So obviously Linux is business friendly. The fact that some businesses have not chosen to be Linux friendly is due to a number of things: A GPL-incompatible (outdated) business plan based on selling infinitely reproducible bits, a lack of vision in upper management, a lack of talent in their engineering or programming department, or other reasons.

You obviously have put some thought into the question of licensing, and whatever license you end up picking, it will be because you feel comfortable with it, not because everyone else is using it. There is a lot of value in that. Sometimes I get the feeling that young programmers license everything they write under the GPL just because GPL is &quot;hip&quot; and &quot;with it&quot;, and their immature code ends up diluting the quality of the otherwise stellar GPL codebase. Programmers who pick their licenses due to forethought and conviction tend to be better visionaries and leaders, in my experience. And often better coders as well.

Regardless of which camp you choose, you will be an asset to that camp. I am hoping that you will choose the GPL camp, but GPL will not make any exceptions for you. It will require you to play by the rules as it does with everyone else. Knowing that, do as you will. >>



Well I enjoyed this little debate with you. You came from the slashdot lines of linux fanaticism and pulled out of it a bit. Also these last few posts showed civility the others probably wouldnt believe
But like I said, I support both licenses. And I hope this debate goes on until long after people think of windows as those things you look out of in your house.

 

[lucidguy]

<< But just becuase a software company wants to make money doesn't make their licensing outdated, as you so &quot;elegantly&quot; put it. >>



We are living in an age of faster Internet connections, bigger hard drives, speedier CD burners and practically free CD-Rs. The cost of reproducing bits is minimal, asymptotically approaching zero.

In this technological climate, there is no value proposition that a company can make to me that can justify having me pay them hundreds of dollars for a so-called product that is the equivalent act of downloading (which costs me maybe a few cents) and burning onto CD (maybe five cents maximum).

Linux opened people's eyes to this, and now people realize that the business of selling bits is a stinky business. You're not offering me, the consumer, any value by charging me one thousand times what it costs you to make that reproduction. I will make it myself, thank you very much.

The GPL camp aims to build a safe haven for valuable bits (not just software, GPL-like licenses have already been drafted for documents, e-books, games, and music) that people can copy and distribute for the marginal cost of downloading and burning on CD. The rising popularity of the GPL lets people see why selling bits is a stinky business.

The value propositions in the short term future will be personalization, support, reliability, and value-added services. This is how merchants made money before the age of supermarkets: They provided individualized, friendly service to their frequent customers. Such differentiation is once again necessary in a technological climate where anyone can make a copy as well as anyone else. Selling an identical package of bits to a zillion customers for a price that is one thousand times the cost of reprodiction is a stinky business, and in the post-GPL era, the people know better.

 

[Noriaki]

When you buy Windows, you pay for more than the bits.
That's like saying IBM should sell you a hard drive for the cost of the raw materials, or Intel should sell CPUs for the same.

You are talking about added value, and you are ignoring the value Windows adds for the average consumer. And I can't blame you for that, you are obviously not the average end user that wants to read his email and surf the web for new cookie recipies. But for those people there are advantages to windows.

And who are you to say that Microsoft charging for the time and effort they put into their products is a &quot;stinky business&quot;?

Most people charge for time and effort. You go into any store, items there are priced higher than the store paid for them.
Or a mom&amp;pop shop that builds your PC for you. They charge you more than it cost them to just get the hardware. They charge for their time that they put into building that machine.

Personally I like the idea behind GPL quite a lot. That everyone develops software for the benefit of everyone, is IMO the way it should be done. But then I build PCs and do tech support for all my friends - and their friends, and their friends and so on and so forth - that aren't technically adept enough to do it themselves without charging them for my time. I also think that communism is a great idea. Even better is Star Trek, just abolish money altogether. It's a senseless medium that drives humanity to greed and useless acquisitional desires. It would be so much nicer if I could just spend my time creating software becuase I love to do it and never have to worry about rent or bills or groceries.

But lets get off that tangent...the point is that most people want to be paid for their time and effort, and most companies have to charge to pay their employees and pay for the R&amp;D they put into the software they create. There is a huge group of tech savvy people that program under GPL, and don't charge for their time and that's great. But who are you to say that software companies that do charge for their time and effort are evil? Anymore than IBM charging more for it's hard drives than manufacturing costs. Or Intel charing for it's CPUs. Or even Radio Shack charging more for that DVD player than they paid for it.

 

[lucidguy]

<< But who are you to say that software companies that do charge for their time and effort are evil? >>



They may not be evil, but they are still in a stinky, outdated business. They are becoming more and more irrelevant to the marketplace. When a fully functional, stable, graphical operating system is available for free, it's pretty difficult to make a case for an equivalent product that costs hundreds of dollars per copy.

Think about what would happen if a company the size of GE or Unilever transitioned entirely to open source. They would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in pointless license fees. That's good money that they can spend on developing new products, providing a better customer experience, or lowering their prices.

When your competition offers exactly what you offer, exactly for free, it's time to change your business model.

 

[Noriaki]

What about the companies whose business is software though?

Do we just tell them to all go get better jobs?

And you didn't answer my question.
Why is it OK for IBM to sell hard drives at so much more than it costs to make. But it's not ok for Microsoft to do the same with their Software?

Just because you personally might be able to make your own Software. Well lets pretend for a moment you are Electrical engineer. You can make your own hard drives. Wouldn't it seem rather &quot;stinky&quot; for IBM to charge so much for something you can do yourself?

 

[lucidguy]

<< What about the companies whose business is software though?

Do we just tell them to all go get better jobs? >>



95% of software is written in this country is written on a contract basis.

None of this software would be impacted negatively by the GPL.

Since the software is being licensed from the programmer or programming team to a single individual or a single company for internal use (in other words, since the software will never be distributed) the GPL does not require that the company purchasing the software disclose its source to anyone. The GPL would only require the purchaser to disclose the source to the software if they distributed the software beyond the internal use of the company, which is often completely against the license terms in contracted programming jobs anyhow.

So, to answer your question, 5% of the programming community in the States who make money out of selling the very same software to a zillion people, need to get new jobs. There is no value in selling the exact same software to a zillion people. If the software solves a problem that needs solving for so many people, chances are that an open source alternative is either already available, or can be made available rather quickly.

IBM, etc, are irrelevant. You are comparing the sale of physical goods to money earned through abusing a government-granted copyright monopoly. There is absolutely no comparison.

 

[Noriaki]

Fair enough on the contract programmers.

Why is it irrelevant to compare IBM to Microsoft?
Software costs a few cents for a CD to distribute.
Hardware costs a couple of dollars per unit to manufacture.

Neither cost anywhere near what they sell for to make. And both fill in that extra gap from pretty much the same sources.

What monopoly? Microsoft is not a monopoly. They control a large portion of the desktop space because they did a good job convincing joe user they are the best choice. But there are plenty of alternatives.

A monopoly would be Intel if AMD, Cyrix, IDT, Motorola, etc did not exsist. Or microsoft if Linux, MacOS, Solaris, AIX, BSD, BeOS, and all the other forms of Unix and other OSes out there did not exist.

Just becuase Microsoft controls a large portion of the OS market through good marketting doesn't make them a monopoly.

And they have done some questionable things in the past, but that still doesn't make them a monopoly.