• Georg Wrede (17/17) Mar 27 2009 Seems BSD should be Our Way:
• Sean Kelly (15/17) Mar 27 2009 If the attribution clause in the BSD license really does cover
• Steven Schveighoffer (21/37) Mar 27 2009 Interesting anecdote: Our company developed a Linux driver to one piece...
• Yigal Chripun (26/45) Mar 28 2009 How is this different from Walter, Andrei and co. refusing to look at
• Nick Sabalausky (5/36) Mar 28 2009 I think you've misunderstood him. Maybe I'm the one who's mistaken, but ...
• Yigal Chripun (23/61) Mar 28 2009 I'm not sure you're correct - in Steve's example the company used a
• Mike Parker (9/13) Mar 28 2009 That's not the point. Plenty of companies use open source libraries in
• Yigal Chripun (15/28) Mar 29 2009 you contradict yourself. if a company uses open source libraries in
• Jussi Jumppanen (5/8) Mar 29 2009 The Apple OS X is a BSD derivative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_...
• Bill Baxter (15/23) Mar 29 2009 That's more an example of just usurping BSD software for your own use.
• Mike Parker (20/53) Mar 29 2009 No contradictions here. When someone releases a library under a more
• Yigal Chripun (22/36) Mar 30 2009 all I can say is: huh?
• Mike Parker (27/69) Mar 30 2009 So, how is what I said bullshit? Where did I say anyone was forcing
• BCS (7/30) Mar 31 2009 GPL says in effect to the client programmer: "If you use /my/ code than ...
• Sergey Gromov (13/18) Mar 28 2009 I hear automotive analogies here and there as "explanations" why open
• =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=E9r=F4me_M=2E_Berger=22?= (19/41) Mar 29 2009 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
• Nick Sabalausky (13/18) Mar 29 2009 Hmm, gaining income from "specific developments and customizations" is a...
• naryl (2/4) Mar 29 2009 You can use GPL only for sources. http://www.planeshift.it developers re...
• Frits van Bommel (7/18) Mar 29 2009 And then, of course, there are the library developers that release their...
• Rainer Deyke (5/17) Mar 29 2009 There's a market for customizations to, or customer support for, single
• Jarrett Billingsley (7/22) Mar 29 2009 ou
• Sergey Gromov (9/41) Mar 29 2009 Yeah, sure. How much support a single-player game needs? Or a
• =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=E9r=F4me_M=2E_Berger=22?= (39/62) Mar 29 2009 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
• Nick Sabalausky (6/10) Mar 29 2009 Yay! Another like-minded gamer :)
• Steven Schveighoffer (45/95) Mar 30 2009 It's different because prior to licensing the driver as GPL, they did no...
• Yigal Chripun (26/125) Mar 30 2009 sources are not the only issue here. Linux is a monolithic kernel. that
• Steven Schveighoffer (48/100) Mar 30 2009 No, it would not be reasonable. In fact that would just be a nice fat
• Bill Baxter (7/16) Mar 30 2009 se is
• Steven Schveighoffer (6/23) Mar 30 2009 If someone was allergic to nuts, and they are going around eating peanut...
• Bill Baxter (13/37) Mar 30 2009 :
• Joel C. Salomon (9/26) Mar 31 2009 People allergic to (pea)nuts are sometimes so sensitive that the trace
• Sergey Gromov (5/31) Mar 31 2009 I'd expect an allergic person to be very well aware of what's dangerous
• Yigal Chripun (35/88) Mar 30 2009 what if the defendant doesn't have/want to spend that money on lawyers?
• Mike Parker (5/20) Mar 30 2009 And notice that they actually used the Classpath Exception so that end
• Steven Schveighoffer (45/131) Mar 31 2009 It's typical to counter-sue for attorney fees. That is generally what
• Nick Sabalausky (10/18) Mar 27 2009 Shoot, *I* look at the GPL and experience fear. Not fear of loosing secr...
• dsimcha (8/9) Mar 27 2009 I've explained this to people several times before because others have b...
• Nick Sabalausky (3/17) Mar 27 2009 Oh, I realize that. I was just being a smart-ass. ;)
• Walter Bright (3/7) Mar 27 2009 I always thought the "free as in beer" came from this:
• Nick Sabalausky (4/10) Mar 27 2009 *shrug* For all I know it could have come from that. But one thing I do
• Walter Bright (3/14) Mar 27 2009 I attended a lecture by him once. He's also engaging and a very nice
• Alix Pexton (8/24) Mar 28 2009 My interpretation of the phrase "Free, as in beer" is that the beer is
• Mike Parker (14/40) Mar 28 2009 I think everyone is reading too much into it. The point is simply to
• Alix Pexton (3/45) Mar 28 2009 Who pays for the beer when it is you who hosts the party?
• Brad Roberts (5/52) Mar 28 2009 I would have thought that was obvious in a discussion on open source
• dsimcha (16/33) Mar 29 2009 Been thinking about this, and I think one of the things that the GPL rea...
• Kagamin (3/11) Mar 30 2009 This is a lie. There is just no way for cigarette-chomping executives to...
• Sergey Gromov (4/16) Mar 30 2009 Sure they know. They know too well that one wrong step, one ignorant
• Kagamin (2/7) Mar 31 2009 Your guess is wrong and you're far from their level :)
• Sergey Gromov (3/12) Mar 31 2009 Oh you know me too well. Probably you also know the color of my

Georg Wrede <georg.wrede iki.fi> writes:

Seems BSD should be Our Way:

[...] has a downside, the downside is that people, especially lawyers, 
especially corporate bosses look at the GPL and experience fear. Fear 
that all of their corporate secrets, business knowledge, and special 
sauce will suddenly be everted to the outside world by some inadvertent 
slip by some internal code. I think that fear is now costing us more 
than the threat[...]

http://osnews.com/story/21192/ESR_GPL_No_Longer_Needed

........................

Unrelated to this, but interesting, too:

Microsoft Server/Tools boss Muglia said that "at some point, almost all 
our product(s) will have open source in (them)." He went on to say that 
"if MySQL (or) Linux do a better job for you, of course you should use 
those products."

Well I'll be darned. I thought they'd get that like 5 years from now. 
(Hmm, maybe everybody should stick to the GPL, after all...)

http://osnews.com/story/21053/Muglia_Open_Source_To_Permeate_Microsoft

Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:

Georg Wrede wrote:
 
 Seems BSD should be Our Way

If the attribution clause in the BSD license really does cover 
application binaries built containing a BSD-licensed library then it's 
pretty much not an option in most corporate environments.  I've tried to 
get corporate documentation and legal teams to agree with this in the 
past and was unsuccessful, to say the least.

On Don's recommendation I've switched the Druntime license to use the 
Boost license instead of BSD.  It's about as permissive as possible 
without making the code public domain, and doesn't have any of the weird 
problems "public domain" licensed software seems to have both with US 
corporate lawyer paranoia and countries abroad with no legal support for 
"public domain" copyrights.

It's nice to see ESR coming around about the GPL though.  I don't know 
anyone that will go near GPL-licensed source code for exactly the 
reasons he mentions.

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:

On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:58:03 -0400, Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org>  
wrote:

 Georg Wrede wrote:
  Seems BSD should be Our Way

 If the attribution clause in the BSD license really does cover  
 application binaries built containing a BSD-licensed library then it's  
 pretty much not an option in most corporate environments.  I've tried to  
 get corporate documentation and legal teams to agree with this in the  
 past and was unsuccessful, to say the least.

 On Don's recommendation I've switched the Druntime license to use the  
 Boost license instead of BSD.  It's about as permissive as possible  
 without making the code public domain, and doesn't have any of the weird  
 problems "public domain" licensed software seems to have both with US  
 corporate lawyer paranoia and countries abroad with no legal support for  
 "public domain" copyrights.

 It's nice to see ESR coming around about the GPL though.  I don't know  
 anyone that will go near GPL-licensed source code for exactly the  
 reasons he mentions.

Interesting anecdote:  Our company developed a Linux driver to one piece  
of hardware that our largest customer used.  We did not release it under  
GPL terms but this is OK legally since the kernel doesn't require GPL'd  
drivers.

The customer had a problem with one of the stock open source drivers in  
their OS.  However, they couldn't get *any* support from the community  
because the community wouldn't even bother looking at a kernel that was  
"tainted" by a proprietary driver.  So we were *forced* to relicense our  
driver under GPL terms (this customer has a lot of clout), just so the  
free software community would look at a problem completely unrelated to  
our driver.  They probably never even looked at the source in our driver.

This is the kind of mentality I think that completely goes against  
progress, and it's fostered by the GPL.  I'm not saying the GPL is  
useless, but I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it  
unless they are forced to.  And there's this holier-than-thou attitude  
 from GPL supporters that completely sucks.

Anyway, I agree that the world could do just as good without GPL.  Maybe  
it was necessary in the beginning, but not any more.

-Steve

Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:

On 27/03/2009 19:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 Interesting anecdote: Our company developed a Linux driver to one piece
 of hardware that our largest customer used. We did not release it under
 GPL terms but this is OK legally since the kernel doesn't require GPL'd
 drivers.

 The customer had a problem with one of the stock open source drivers in
 their OS. However, they couldn't get *any* support from the community
 because the community wouldn't even bother looking at a kernel that was
 "tainted" by a proprietary driver. So we were *forced* to relicense our
 driver under GPL terms (this customer has a lot of clout), just so the
 free software community would look at a problem completely unrelated to
 our driver. They probably never even looked at the source in our driver.

How is this different from Walter, Andrei and co. refusing to look at 
Tango?
Putting aside attitudes and ego, the community refused to look at the 
tainted kernel out of fear of potentially being sued for copy-right 
infringement and for the you have the draconian (and unconstitutional) 
US law to blame, not the FSF and its GPL.
 This is the kind of mentality I think that completely goes against
 progress, and it's fostered by the GPL. I'm not saying the GPL is
 useless, but I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it
 unless they are forced to. And there's this holier-than-thou attitude
 from GPL supporters that completely sucks.

 Anyway, I agree that the world could do just as good without GPL. Maybe
 it was necessary in the beginning, but not any more.

 -Steve

Both proprietary and free software have a place in the world since they 
serve different purposes.
for instance, I wouldn't want military software to be available online 
with the risk of being exploited by terrorists but on the other hand I 
wouldn't want to use any non reasonably free COTS software. When you buy 
a car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to 
software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any 
warranty if you mess with the internals of its product, but they 
shouldn't prevent you access to those internals.

"I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it [the GPL]"
how do you explain Red-Hat's success? there are many many companies that 
gain a lot by using GPL and they are certainly not forced to use it.

I agree with you that there are zealots with that holier-than-thou 
attitude and that this really sucks. by saying - "I agree that the world 
could do just as good without GPL. Maybe it was necessary in the 
beginning, but not any more. " you just joined the group of zealots.

As I already said, in reality, both proprietary and free software are 
useful since they fulfill different requirements. saying otherwise is 
stupid and wrong.

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

"Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:gql5ou$2te1$1 digitalmars.com...
 On 27/03/2009 19:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 This is the kind of mentality I think that completely goes against
 progress, and it's fostered by the GPL. I'm not saying the GPL is
 useless, but I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it
 unless they are forced to. And there's this holier-than-thou attitude
 from GPL supporters that completely sucks.

 Anyway, I agree that the world could do just as good without GPL. Maybe
 it was necessary in the beginning, but not any more.

 -Steve

 Both proprietary and free software have a place in the world since they 
 serve different purposes.
 for instance, I wouldn't want military software to be available online 
 with the risk of being exploited by terrorists but on the other hand I 
 wouldn't want to use any non reasonably free COTS software. When you buy a 
 car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to 
 software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any warranty 
 if you mess with the internals of its product, but they shouldn't prevent 
 you access to those internals.

 "I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it [the GPL]"
 how do you explain Red-Hat's success? there are many many companies that 
 gain a lot by using GPL and they are certainly not forced to use it.

 I agree with you that there are zealots with that holier-than-thou 
 attitude and that this really sucks. by saying - "I agree that the world 
 could do just as good without GPL. Maybe it was necessary in the 
 beginning, but not any more. " you just joined the group of zealots.

 As I already said, in reality, both proprietary and free software are 
 useful since they fulfill different requirements. saying otherwise is 
 stupid and wrong.

I think you've misunderstood him. Maybe I'm the one who's mistaken, but I 
interpreted what he said as being "BSD/zlib/etc > GPL" rather than 
"proprietary is better than free/open/whatever-you-wanna-call-it". 

Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:

On 28/03/2009 19:46, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 "Yigal Chripun"<yigal100 gmail.com>  wrote in message
 news:gql5ou$2te1$1 digitalmars.com...
 On 27/03/2009 19:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 This is the kind of mentality I think that completely goes against
 progress, and it's fostered by the GPL. I'm not saying the GPL is
 useless, but I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it
 unless they are forced to. And there's this holier-than-thou attitude
 from GPL supporters that completely sucks.

 Anyway, I agree that the world could do just as good without GPL. Maybe
 it was necessary in the beginning, but not any more.

 -Steve

 Both proprietary and free software have a place in the world since they
 serve different purposes.
 for instance, I wouldn't want military software to be available online
 with the risk of being exploited by terrorists but on the other hand I
 wouldn't want to use any non reasonably free COTS software. When you buy a
 car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to
 software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any warranty
 if you mess with the internals of its product, but they shouldn't prevent
 you access to those internals.

 "I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it [the GPL]"
 how do you explain Red-Hat's success? there are many many companies that
 gain a lot by using GPL and they are certainly not forced to use it.

 I agree with you that there are zealots with that holier-than-thou
 attitude and that this really sucks. by saying - "I agree that the world
 could do just as good without GPL. Maybe it was necessary in the
 beginning, but not any more. " you just joined the group of zealots.

 As I already said, in reality, both proprietary and free software are
 useful since they fulfill different requirements. saying otherwise is
 stupid and wrong.

 I think you've misunderstood him. Maybe I'm the one who's mistaken, but I
 interpreted what he said as being "BSD/zlib/etc>  GPL" rather than
 "proprietary is better than free/open/whatever-you-wanna-call-it".

I'm not sure you're correct - in Steve's example the company used a 
closed source license and was "forced" to switch to GPL. those two 
approaches are obviously incompatible and I doubt very much that the 
closed source firm would prefer BSD over GPL over their previous closed 
source license.

But even if you're right my argument still stands.
BSD/zlib/whatever doesn't protect those basic freedoms that the current 
draconian laws try to remove and that some business models rely upon.

to continue my example, Red Hat doesn't just provide the source code for 
its software out of good will alone, its business model relies on the 
fact that that source code and all its derivatives is open source and 
will remain so. there are many successful companies that use and rely on 
free (as in GPL) software.
BSD does not provide this guaranty - for instance, MS didn't implement 
the network stack for windows from scratch, instead, they used the BSD 
code for that. they also closed it and all the changes they did to that 
code. For a company like Red Hat this is unacceptable - that means if 
Red Hat used the BSD license, MS could simply take their code, modify it 
and close it, putting Red Hat out of business.

How many companies do you know that use the BSD for their products?
BSD is used by universities and non-profit organizations not companies.
claiming that BSD > GPL in a corporate environment is simply wrong.

Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:

Yigal Chripun wrote:


 
 How many companies do you know that use the BSD for their products?
 BSD is used by universities and non-profit organizations not companies.
 claiming that BSD > GPL in a corporate environment is simply wrong.

That's not the point. Plenty of companies use open source libraries in 
their code, even if they don't open source the end product. BSD is 
friendlier to them because they aren't forced to open up everything that 
touches it. GPL is viral. Use one GPL library and your whole project is 
tainted. Philosophically, GPL gives freedom to the end user. BSD leaves 
freedom with the developer. IMO, the latter is where it should be, as it 
is the developer who expends the resources to create the product in the 
first place.

Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:

On 29/03/2009 08:26, Mike Parker wrote:
 Yigal Chripun wrote:


 How many companies do you know that use the BSD for their products?
 BSD is used by universities and non-profit organizations not companies.
 claiming that BSD > GPL in a corporate environment is simply wrong.

 That's not the point. Plenty of companies use open source libraries in
 their code, even if they don't open source the end product. BSD is
 friendlier to them because they aren't forced to open up everything that
 touches it. GPL is viral. Use one GPL library and your whole project is
 tainted. Philosophically, GPL gives freedom to the end user. BSD leaves
 freedom with the developer. IMO, the latter is where it should be, as it
 is the developer who expends the resources to create the product in the
 first place.

you contradict yourself. if a company uses open source libraries in 
their products than they are the *users* of the code, and the 
*developers* are those who *created* the library. what you meant to say 
is that many companies _exploit_ non free open source code (BSD and 
such) in their closed source products. You do all the hard work, give 
away your library for free, and those companies exploit that to enlarge 
their profit margins, after all they invested much less time/money in 
the product. if you really intended this outcome, you just robbed 
someone's job at that same company.

The GPL gives freedom to both the developers and the end-users while the 
BSD doesn't give any freedoms at all, to no one. That is why there are 
many successful companies that base their business model on free 
licenses like the GPL and zero companies that use the BSD. and that is 
the point.

Jussi Jumppanen <jussij zeusedit.com> writes:

Yigal Chripun Wrote:

 That is why there are many successful companies that base 
 their business model on free licenses like the GPL and zero 
 companies that use the BSD.

The Apple OS X is a BSD derivative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X

  "Mac OS X is based upon the Mach kernel.[7] Certain parts 
  from FreeBSD's and NetBSD's implementation of Unix were 
  incorporated in Nextstep, the core of Mac OS X."

Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Jussi Jumppanen <jussij zeusedit.com> wro=
te:
 Yigal Chripun Wrote:

 That is why there are many successful companies that base
 their business model on free licenses like the GPL and zero
 companies that use the BSD.

 The Apple OS X is a BSD derivative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X

 =A0"Mac OS X is based upon the Mach kernel.[7] Certain parts
 =A0from FreeBSD's and NetBSD's implementation of Unix were
 =A0incorporated in Nextstep, the core of Mac OS X."

That's more an example of just usurping BSD software for your own use.
I think Yigal was talking more about companies using the BSD license
on code they themselves write in-house.  But there are various
examples of that that come to mind:

Apple's contributions to LLVM
Adobe Open Source Labs
ILM's OpenEXR image format and tools
Enthought's contributions to NumPy/SciPy

BSD-like licenses can work for companies in the case where the
software is not the company's core business (like the first three), or
where the core business is consulting services delivered on top of the
software (like Enthought).

--bb

Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:

Yigal Chripun wrote:
 On 29/03/2009 08:26, Mike Parker wrote:
 Yigal Chripun wrote:


 How many companies do you know that use the BSD for their products?
 BSD is used by universities and non-profit organizations not companies.
 claiming that BSD > GPL in a corporate environment is simply wrong.

 That's not the point. Plenty of companies use open source libraries in
 their code, even if they don't open source the end product. BSD is
 friendlier to them because they aren't forced to open up everything that
 touches it. GPL is viral. Use one GPL library and your whole project is
 tainted. Philosophically, GPL gives freedom to the end user. BSD leaves
 freedom with the developer. IMO, the latter is where it should be, as it
 is the developer who expends the resources to create the product in the
 first place.

 
 you contradict yourself. if a company uses open source libraries in 
 their products than they are the *users* of the code, and the 
 *developers* are those who *created* the library. what you meant to say 
 is that many companies _exploit_ non free open source code (BSD and 
 such) in their closed source products. You do all the hard work, give 
 away your library for free, and those companies exploit that to enlarge 
 their profit margins, after all they invested much less time/money in 
 the product. if you really intended this outcome, you just robbed 
 someone's job at that same company.

No contradictions here. When someone releases a library under a more 
generous license like the BSD, they know full well that anyone can use 
that source in closed-source, proprietary software. Companies who do so 
are not *exploiting* anyone or anything. They are given permission by 
the developers of the library, who consciously made that choice, to do so.
 
 The GPL gives freedom to both the developers and the end-users while the 
 BSD doesn't give any freedoms at all, to no one. That is why there are 
 many successful companies that base their business model on free 
 licenses like the GPL and zero companies that use the BSD. and that is 
 the point.

No, it gives no freedom to developers at all. Using any GPL code in your
project /forces/ you to open your source. It takes the decision of
whether to open or not out of your hands and puts it in the hands of
whomever created the GPLed product you use. That's why you won't find
bindings for any GPL libraries in Derelict, because then Derelict and
any project that uses it would have to be GPL. You call that freedom?

I think the GPL is a great choice for executables, particularly those 
that were formerly closed. For example, id software uses the GPL when 
opening their older games. For libraries, though, it severely limits the 
user base. I would never release a library under the GPL, because I 
don't want to restrict anyone in using it. As a library developer, I 
don't care what the end product is, or who the end users are. All I care 
about are those using my product. They are the ones I want to whom I 
want to give the freedom of choice.

Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:

On 30/03/2009 04:42, Mike Parker wrote:
 No, it gives no freedom to developers at all. Using any GPL code in your
 project /forces/ you to open your source. It takes the decision of
 whether to open or not out of your hands and puts it in the hands of
 whomever created the GPLed product you use. That's why you won't find
 bindings for any GPL libraries in Derelict, because then Derelict and
 any project that uses it would have to be GPL. You call that freedom?

all I can say is: huh?
Nobody forces you to use GPL code if you don't like it. Sorry to say 
that, but the above is bullshit.
GPL *is a* license. if I write code and license it with my preferred 
license, no matter if it's GPL or NDAed proprietary license, if you want 
to use *my* code, you need to abide by *my* rules. I am a developer, I 
write code, *I* decide under what terms can you use it. that's as simple 
as that. don't like my terms? go write your own code or find someone 
else that will offer you terms closer to what you want.

if I use some proprietary library in my project which I want to open 
source but can't because of that library's license, should I claim that 
that library authors are forcing me to have a proprietary license? that 
ridicules, I made the choice to use that library therefore I must abide 
by the conditions of that library. If I don't like it, I can always 
switch a vendor or implement my own.

 I think the GPL is a great choice for executables, particularly those
 that were formerly closed. For example, id software uses the GPL when
 opening their older games. For libraries, though, it severely limits the
 user base. I would never release a library under the GPL, because I
 don't want to restrict anyone in using it. As a library developer, I
 don't care what the end product is, or who the end users are. All I care
 about are those using my product. They are the ones I want to whom I
 want to give the freedom of choice.

nothing prevents you from using free software libraries with your closed 
source project, that's why we have the LGPL.
again, no one is forcing you as a library writer to use the GPL, use 
whatever license you want. If you really want you can even send a 100$ 
bill personally by snail-mail with your picture to anyone that downloads 
your code, if you so wish.

Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:

Yigal Chripun wrote:
 On 30/03/2009 04:42, Mike Parker wrote:
 No, it gives no freedom to developers at all. Using any GPL code in your
 project /forces/ you to open your source. It takes the decision of
 whether to open or not out of your hands and puts it in the hands of
 whomever created the GPLed product you use. That's why you won't find
 bindings for any GPL libraries in Derelict, because then Derelict and
 any project that uses it would have to be GPL. You call that freedom?

 
 all I can say is: huh?
 Nobody forces you to use GPL code if you don't like it. Sorry to say 
 that, but the above is bullshit.
 GPL *is a* license. if I write code and license it with my preferred 
 license, no matter if it's GPL or NDAed proprietary license, if you want 
 to use *my* code, you need to abide by *my* rules. I am a developer, I 
 write code, *I* decide under what terms can you use it. that's as simple 
 as that. don't like my terms? go write your own code or find someone 
 else that will offer you terms closer to what you want.

So, how is what I said bullshit? Where did I say anyone was forcing 
people to use the GPL? You are saying here the same thing I did. /If/ I 
use GPL code in my project, the terms of the license require that I GPL 
everything that touches it. At that point, the developer of the GPLed 
code is dictating that my project be open, not me. That's why the GPL is 
not business-friendly, which is the point of what ESR was saying.

 
 if I use some proprietary library in my project which I want to open 
 source but can't because of that library's license, should I claim that 
 that library authors are forcing me to have a proprietary license? that 
 ridicules, I made the choice to use that library therefore I must abide 
 by the conditions of that library. If I don't like it, I can always 
 switch a vendor or implement my own.

Sure, choosing to use the GPL is the same as choosing to open your 
source. Choosing to use any license, including your hypothetical 
proprietary license, is a conscious choice to abide by its terms. But 
it's still the license dictating the future of my software, not me. The 
key word here being 'abide'. By using BSD/MIT/ZLib-licensed libraries, 
the choice is entirely mine. These licenses do not dictate decisions 
about my software. I can open my source today and close it tomorrow 
without changing a thing. If I were using a GPL library in my app, I'd 
have to find, or create, a replacement before I could make the change to 
closed source. I would be restricted in the types of libraries I could 
use. If someone came along tomorrow with this great library that would 
enhance my product greatly, I would be unable to use it if it were not 
GPL compatible.

That is not freedom, is not business-friendly, nor, IMO, very sensible. 
Freedom means I would be able to continue to develop, maintain, and make 
decisions about my software on my terms. The GPL does not allow that. 
Neither does your hypothetical proprietary license, which I would avoid 
like the plague.

 
 I think the GPL is a great choice for executables, particularly those
 that were formerly closed. For example, id software uses the GPL when
 opening their older games. For libraries, though, it severely limits the
 user base. I would never release a library under the GPL, because I
 don't want to restrict anyone in using it. As a library developer, I
 don't care what the end product is, or who the end users are. All I care
 about are those using my product. They are the ones I want to whom I
 want to give the freedom of choice.

 
 nothing prevents you from using free software libraries with your closed 
 source project, that's why we have the LGPL.
 again, no one is forcing you as a library writer to use the GPL, use 
 whatever license you want. If you really want you can even send a 100$ 
 bill personally by snail-mail with your picture to anyone that downloads 
 your code, if you so wish.

Yes, I can and do use the licenses I prefer. I'm not debating that no 
one has freedom in choosing a license. Neither was ESR.

BCS <ao pathlink.com> writes:

Reply to Yigal,

 On 30/03/2009 04:42, Mike Parker wrote:
 
 No, it gives no freedom to developers at all. Using any GPL code in
 your project /forces/ you to open your source. It takes the decision
 of whether to open or not out of your hands and puts it in the hands
 of whomever created the GPLed product you use. That's why you won't
 find bindings for any GPL libraries in Derelict, because then
 Derelict and any project that uses it would have to be GPL. You call
 that freedom?
 

 all I can say is: huh?
 Nobody forces you to use GPL code if you don't like it. Sorry to say
 that, but the above is bullshit.
 GPL *is a* license. if I write code and license it with my preferred
 license, no matter if it's GPL or NDAed proprietary license, if you
 want
 to use *my* code, you need to abide by *my* rules. I am a developer, I
 write code, *I* decide under what terms can you use it. that's as
 simple
 as that.

GPL says in effect to the client programmer: "If you use /my/ code than /you/ 
have to release /your/ code on /my/ terms."

That works but reads as an ultimatum and leaves it unusable for many people.

[...]

 nothing prevents you from using free software libraries with your
 closed
 source project, that's why we have the LGPL.

But we're not talking about LGPL (the fact the the LGPL exists sort of supports 
Mike's point).

Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:38:45 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:

 When you buy 
 a car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to 
 software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any 
 warranty if you mess with the internals of its product, but they 
 shouldn't prevent you access to those internals.

I hear automotive analogies here and there as "explanations" why open
source is good.  But automotive does not apply.

Yes you can buy Ford, modify it and sell it at a higher price.  But you
cannot put Ford out of business this way because you must start from
scratch on every single car you modify and that's a significant amount
of work.  And if you actually try to manufacture copies of Ford cars
you'll be sued for patent infringement.

Now, how would you make money on free, as in libre, software?  How would
you make a free, single-player RPG and still stay in business?  All you
can under GPL is take payment for distribution, as long as nobody else
starts to distribute it for free.  This means giving your hard work for
free, as in gratis, not business.

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=E9r=F4me_M=2E_Berger=22?= <jeberger free.fr> writes:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Sergey Gromov wrote:
 Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:38:45 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:
 
 When you buy 
 a car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to 
 software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any 
 warranty if you mess with the internals of its product, but they 
 shouldn't prevent you access to those internals.

 
 I hear automotive analogies here and there as "explanations" why open
 source is good.  But automotive does not apply.
 
 Yes you can buy Ford, modify it and sell it at a higher price.  But you
 cannot put Ford out of business this way because you must start from
 scratch on every single car you modify and that's a significant amount
 of work.  And if you actually try to manufacture copies of Ford cars
 you'll be sued for patent infringement.
 
 Now, how would you make money on free, as in libre, software?  How would
 you make a free, single-player RPG and still stay in business?  All you
 can under GPL is take payment for distribution, as long as nobody else
 starts to distribute it for free.  This means giving your hard work for
 free, as in gratis, not business.

	Ask RedHat, or any of the increasingly large number of companies
that *do* make money on free, as in libre, software. Basically, you
make your customers pay for specific developments and
customizations. Once the software is released you still get paid for
tech support and maintenance.

		Jerome
- --
mailto:jeberger free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger jabber.fr
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAknPI10ACgkQd0kWM4JG3k/YagCfecpRE+55iKAXYxXgO+Q0Vml+
KxIAoL7Yno0jCJvlgaZwnX6xOXYAa0ug
=uTy5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

""J�r�me M. Berger"" <jeberger free.fr> wrote in message 
news:gqn80v$17gk$1 digitalmars.com...
 Ask RedHat, or any of the increasingly large number of companies
 that *do* make money on free, as in libre, software. Basically, you
 make your customers pay for specific developments and
 customizations. Once the software is released you still get paid for
 tech support and maintenance.

Hmm, gaining income from "specific developments and customizations" is an 
interesting business model for a free software company (free as in "both", 
because really, how often is "free as in libre" software ever *not* 
available at no cost? Heck, how often is that even realistically possible?), 
I didn't realize Red Hat was doing that.

But I've never been a big fan of the idea of using tech support as a 
business model for free (as in both) software. The way I see it, that 
creates a conflict of interest. The better a piece of software is (almost by 
definition of "better"), the less tech support it really needs. If I were 
creating a program that had enough tech-support-income-potential to support 
a whole company, I'd be ashamed to call myself a software developer.

naryl <cy ngs.ru> writes:

Nick Sabalausky Wrote:
 how often is "free as in libre" software ever *not* available 
 at no cost? Heck, how often is that even realistically possible?), 

You can use GPL only for sources. http://www.planeshift.it developers released
sources under GPL and content under proprietary license. They could sell it if
they want to.

Frits van Bommel <fvbommel REMwOVExCAPSs.nl> writes:

Jérôme M. Berger wrote:
 Now, how would you make money on free, as in libre, software?  How would
 you make a free, single-player RPG and still stay in business?  All you
 can under GPL is take payment for distribution, as long as nobody else
 starts to distribute it for free.  This means giving your hard work for
 free, as in gratis, not business.

 
 	Ask RedHat, or any of the increasingly large number of companies
 that *do* make money on free, as in libre, software. Basically, you
 make your customers pay for specific developments and
 customizations. Once the software is released you still get paid for
 tech support and maintenance.

And then, of course, there are the library developers that release their 
work as GPL, but sell commercial licenses to those who want to use it 
without GPL restrictions.
Of course, one could argue they don't make money on the free (as in 
both) software, but on the non-free version of it (which may have 
identical code).

Rainer Deyke <rainerd eldwood.com> writes:

J�r�me M. Berger wrote:
 Sergey Gromov wrote:
 Now, how would you make money on free, as in libre, software?  How would
 you make a free, single-player RPG and still stay in business?  All you
 can under GPL is take payment for distribution, as long as nobody else
 starts to distribute it for free.  This means giving your hard work for
 free, as in gratis, not business.

 
 	Ask RedHat, or any of the increasingly large number of companies
 that *do* make money on free, as in libre, software. Basically, you
 make your customers pay for specific developments and
 customizations. Once the software is released you still get paid for
 tech support and maintenance.

There's a market for customizations to, or customer support for, single
player RPGs?


-- 
Rainer Deyke - rainerd eldwood.com

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Rainer Deyke <rainerd eldwood.com> wrote:
 J=E9r=F4me M. Berger wrote:
 Sergey Gromov wrote:
 Now, how would you make money on free, as in libre, software? =A0How wo=



uld
 you make a free, single-player RPG and still stay in business? =A0All y=



ou
 can under GPL is take payment for distribution, as long as nobody else
 starts to distribute it for free. =A0This means giving your hard work f=



or
 free, as in gratis, not business.

 =A0 =A0 =A0 Ask RedHat, or any of the increasingly large number of compa=


nies
 that *do* make money on free, as in libre, software. Basically, you
 make your customers pay for specific developments and
 customizations. Once the software is released you still get paid for
 tech support and maintenance.

 There's a market for customizations to, or customer support for, single
 player RPGs?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/4/5/the-zone-of-pure-breakfast/

Apparently so ;)

Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:29:33 +0200, "J�r�me M. Berger" wrote:

 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
 Hash: SHA1
 
 Sergey Gromov wrote:
 Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:38:45 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:
 
 When you buy 
 a car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to 
 software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any 
 warranty if you mess with the internals of its product, but they 
 shouldn't prevent you access to those internals.

 
 I hear automotive analogies here and there as "explanations" why open
 source is good.  But automotive does not apply.
 
 Yes you can buy Ford, modify it and sell it at a higher price.  But you
 cannot put Ford out of business this way because you must start from
 scratch on every single car you modify and that's a significant amount
 of work.  And if you actually try to manufacture copies of Ford cars
 you'll be sued for patent infringement.
 
 Now, how would you make money on free, as in libre, software?  How would
 you make a free, single-player RPG and still stay in business?  All you
 can under GPL is take payment for distribution, as long as nobody else
 starts to distribute it for free.  This means giving your hard work for
 free, as in gratis, not business.

 
 	Ask RedHat, or any of the increasingly large number of companies
 that *do* make money on free, as in libre, software. Basically, you
 make your customers pay for specific developments and
 customizations. Once the software is released you still get paid for
 tech support and maintenance.

Yeah, sure.  How much support a single-player game needs?  Or a
3D-modeling tool?  I agree with Nick: to make a profit on support you
must create something unusable in the first place, and then charge money
for fixing it.

I agree that support is sometimes a valid business model, like when you
create customized Linux kernels for various hardware and requirements.
But it's definitely not universal enough to apply to every software
created out there.

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=E9r=F4me_M=2E_Berger=22?= <jeberger free.fr> writes:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Sergey Gromov wrote:
 Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:29:33 +0200, "J�r�me M. Berger" wrote:
 Sergey Gromov wrote:
 Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:38:45 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:
 Now, how would you make money on free, as in libre, software?  How would
 you make a free, single-player RPG and still stay in business?  All you
 can under GPL is take payment for distribution, as long as nobody else
 starts to distribute it for free.  This means giving your hard work for
 free, as in gratis, not business.

 	Ask RedHat, or any of the increasingly large number of companies
 that *do* make money on free, as in libre, software. Basically, you
 make your customers pay for specific developments and
 customizations. Once the software is released you still get paid for
 tech support and maintenance.

 
 Yeah, sure.  How much support a single-player game needs?  Or a
 3D-modeling tool?  I agree with Nick: to make a profit on support you
 must create something unusable in the first place, and then charge money
 for fixing it.
 

	A single player game does not need any support, but a game is not
just software. So you can make a free game engine and have
proprietary data (of course, that would mean spending some time on
gameplay and scenario and so on, which most game companies don't do
anyway, they'd rather add some more useless special effects and use
the same old script and gameplay).

	As for the 3D modelling tool, I hope you're kidding? Even though
they use mostly proprietary tools a lot of the budget of films go to
custom extensions to whatever tool they're using. There's a huge
profit to be made there even if the base software was free.

	I agree that you can't make money with free software on the
consumer market, but most proprietary software companies don't make
their money there either (the main exception being games). Most
software companies make money on the B2B market and they *always*
sell additional support (whether it's help to setup the software,
special customizations or formations for the users and admins), so
they could put the software under a free licence and still make
money (and more and more of them do so).

 I agree that support is sometimes a valid business model, like when you
 create customized Linux kernels for various hardware and requirements.
 But it's definitely not universal enough to apply to every software
 created out there.

	I didn't say it could apply to *all* software, I do say it could
apply to *most* (and your previous post stated that it couldn't
apply to any).

		Jerome

PS: making something unusable and charge for fixing it won't work
with free software: if you were unable to get it right at first who
will trust you to fix it right? They're much more likely to hire
someone else to do it for them...
- --
mailto:jeberger free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger jabber.fr
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAknP3tsACgkQd0kWM4JG3k9KcwCff8prkElFXsw5WI45AZ+vnxfA
BJgAoKtvsx9oqZyE2VwptZex6GMVV9pA
=MGxL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

""J�r�me M. Berger"" <jeberger free.fr> wrote in message 
news:gqomss$1034$1 digitalmars.com...
 (of course, that would mean spending some time on
 gameplay and scenario and so on, which most game companies don't do
 anyway, they'd rather add some more useless special effects and use
 the same old script and gameplay).

Yay! Another like-minded gamer :)

I could seriously go on and on about "what's wrong with games and the games 
industry these days". It's no coincidence I use an image of Cranky Kong for 
myself on gaming forums ;) 

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:

On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:38:45 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>  
wrote:

 On 27/03/2009 19:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 Interesting anecdote: Our company developed a Linux driver to one piece
 of hardware that our largest customer used. We did not release it under
 GPL terms but this is OK legally since the kernel doesn't require GPL'd
 drivers.

 The customer had a problem with one of the stock open source drivers in
 their OS. However, they couldn't get *any* support from the community
 because the community wouldn't even bother looking at a kernel that was
 "tainted" by a proprietary driver. So we were *forced* to relicense our
 driver under GPL terms (this customer has a lot of clout), just so the
 free software community would look at a problem completely unrelated to
 our driver. They probably never even looked at the source in our driver.

 How is this different from Walter, Andrei and co. refusing to look at  
 Tango?

It's different because prior to licensing the driver as GPL, they did not  
*have* the source to look at (and therefore could not be tainted by it).   
The annoying part of the story is that our driver had NOTHING TO DO with  
the error in the GPL'd code.  But just because the kernel was touched by  
our code, they refused to fix a bug in their own driver, which would have  
made their driver better.  That is really really stupid IMO.

 Putting aside attitudes and ego, the community refused to look at the  
 tainted kernel out of fear of potentially being sued for copy-right  
 infringement and for the you have the draconian (and unconstitutional)  
 US law to blame, not the FSF and its GPL.

Ah, you're one of those people :)  I can't wait until the U.S. takes over  
your meager country and assimilates you into our capitalist ranks  
mwahahaha!

And as I said, the community refused to look at THEIR source code in THEIR  
driver, not anything in OUR driver.

I think the whole world could do with less people who are petrified of  
being sued, and more people who take responsibility for their own problems.

 This is the kind of mentality I think that completely goes against
 progress, and it's fostered by the GPL. I'm not saying the GPL is
 useless, but I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it
 unless they are forced to. And there's this holier-than-thou attitude
 from GPL supporters that completely sucks.

 Anyway, I agree that the world could do just as good without GPL. Maybe
 it was necessary in the beginning, but not any more.

 -Steve

 Both proprietary and free software have a place in the world since they  
 serve different purposes.
 for instance, I wouldn't want military software to be available online  
 with the risk of being exploited by terrorists but on the other hand I  
 wouldn't want to use any non reasonably free COTS software. When you buy  
 a car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to  
 software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any  
 warranty if you mess with the internals of its product, but they  
 shouldn't prevent you access to those internals.

I never said that open source software isn't important or useful.  I just  
don't think you need the GPL to protect the openness of the software these  
days.  In the beginning, there were very few people working on open source  
software, so GPL protected them, and did a good job of keeping the  
movement alive.  Now there are a ton of people doing open source under a  
ton of licenses (many not GPL-like).  If the GPL all of a sudden went  
away, would open source developers stop developing open source software or  
would they just switch to a different license?  Is it that horrible if a  
company uses your open source software together with closed source  
software but still gives you credit?

 "I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it [the GPL]"
 how do you explain Red-Hat's success? there are many many companies that  
 gain a lot by using GPL and they are certainly not forced to use it.

Red hat has good software, that is why they are successful.  They also  
sell their services for updates, AND I believe they have some non GPL'd  
enterprise software, but I'm not sure, I don't buy their stuff anymore.

But I think you are wrong about the "many many" part.  There are only 2  
companies selling Linux as fully open source software that I know of --  
Red Hat and SuSe.  All the others have gone (and there were a lot of them,  
especially after Red Hat's IPO).  Selling open source, and particularly  
GPL'd software is difficult, I don't think it can sustain many companies.   
I would not be surpised if the number of closed source companies (those  
selling at least SOME closed source software) outnumber the number of open  
source companies by 1000 to 1.

 I agree with you that there are zealots with that holier-than-thou  
 attitude and that this really sucks. by saying - "I agree that the world  
 could do just as good without GPL. Maybe it was necessary in the  
 beginning, but not any more. " you just joined the group of zealots.

I must be a zealot, I disagree with your opinion!

I have no qualms working with GPLd or any other open source software.  I'm  
probably the *least* zealous person when it comes to licensing.  I just  
want to get work done, and stupid shit that gets in the way (such as  
refusing to fix your own bugs because of some political issue) annoys me.

 As I already said, in reality, both proprietary and free software are  
 useful since they fulfill different requirements. saying otherwise is  
 stupid and wrong.

If you mean free as in FSF's meaining of "free" (i.e. copyleft), I think  
you are probably wrong (and heck, I'll throw in stupid too).  But neither  
of us can be proven right because GPLd software isn't going away.

-Steve

Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:

On 30/03/2009 19:24, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:38:45 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>
 wrote:

 On 27/03/2009 19:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 Interesting anecdote: Our company developed a Linux driver to one piece
 of hardware that our largest customer used. We did not release it under
 GPL terms but this is OK legally since the kernel doesn't require GPL'd
 drivers.

 The customer had a problem with one of the stock open source drivers in
 their OS. However, they couldn't get *any* support from the community
 because the community wouldn't even bother looking at a kernel that was
 "tainted" by a proprietary driver. So we were *forced* to relicense our
 driver under GPL terms (this customer has a lot of clout), just so the
 free software community would look at a problem completely unrelated to
 our driver. They probably never even looked at the source in our driver.

 How is this different from Walter, Andrei and co. refusing to look at
 Tango?

 It's different because prior to licensing the driver as GPL, they did
 not *have* the source to look at (and therefore could not be tainted by
 it). The annoying part of the story is that our driver had NOTHING TO DO
 with the error in the GPL'd code. But just because the kernel was
 touched by our code, they refused to fix a bug in their own driver,
 which would have made their driver better. That is really really stupid
 IMO.

sources are not the only issue here. Linux is a monolithic kernel. that 
means everything in it (including drivers) are one process. You already 
know that. usually when you want to find (and fix) a problem, you'd use 
a debugger which allows you to see the memory of the process. there's no 
way to make the debugger show only the memory belonging to the open 
source parts of the code. even if you just see the asm of that closed 
source driver, it'd be reasonable to assume there may be someone evil 
enough to sue you based on that.
people in the US sued MacDonald's because their coffee was hot (and they 
even won the case!). other people sued a company since their peanuts 
contains nuts. why would a developer is free to assume he/she won't be 
sued for accidentally seeing the memory of that closed source driver in 
the debugger?
 Putting aside attitudes and ego, the community refused to look at the
 tainted kernel out of fear of potentially being sued for copy-right
 infringement and for the you have the draconian (and unconstitutional)
 US law to blame, not the FSF and its GPL.

 Ah, you're one of those people :) I can't wait until the U.S. takes over
 your meager country and assimilates you into our capitalist ranks
 mwahahaha!

lol :)

 And as I said, the community refused to look at THEIR source code in
 THEIR driver, not anything in OUR driver.

 I think the whole world could do with less people who are petrified of
 being sued, and more people who take responsibility for their own problems.

 This is the kind of mentality I think that completely goes against
 progress, and it's fostered by the GPL. I'm not saying the GPL is
 useless, but I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it
 unless they are forced to. And there's this holier-than-thou attitude
 from GPL supporters that completely sucks.

 Anyway, I agree that the world could do just as good without GPL. Maybe
 it was necessary in the beginning, but not any more.

 -Steve

 Both proprietary and free software have a place in the world since
 they serve different purposes.
 for instance, I wouldn't want military software to be available online
 with the risk of being exploited by terrorists but on the other hand I
 wouldn't want to use any non reasonably free COTS software. When you
 buy a car you are free to look under the hood and the same should
 apply to software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void
 any warranty if you mess with the internals of its product, but they
 shouldn't prevent you access to those internals.

 I never said that open source software isn't important or useful. I just
 don't think you need the GPL to protect the openness of the software
 these days. In the beginning, there were very few people working on open
 source software, so GPL protected them, and did a good job of keeping
 the movement alive. Now there are a ton of people doing open source
 under a ton of licenses (many not GPL-like). If the GPL all of a sudden
 went away, would open source developers stop developing open source
 software or would they just switch to a different license? Is it that
 horrible if a company uses your open source software together with
 closed source software but still gives you credit?

sometimes it is very horrible, and sometimes not. I'm not for 
generalizations and think that each project should use the best license 
for it. some projects should be GPLed , some not. GPL is not redundant 
as you may claim since there are projects that use it. as I already 
said, all kinds of licenses have a place in our world, and I strongly 
disagree with the notion that only the licenses that you (or me) like 
should exist.

 "I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it [the GPL]"
 how do you explain Red-Hat's success? there are many many companies
 that gain a lot by using GPL and they are certainly not forced to use it.

 Red hat has good software, that is why they are successful. They also
 sell their services for updates, AND I believe they have some non GPL'd
 enterprise software, but I'm not sure, I don't buy their stuff anymore.

 But I think you are wrong about the "many many" part. There are only 2
 companies selling Linux as fully open source software that I know of --
 Red Hat and SuSe. All the others have gone (and there were a lot of
 them, especially after Red Hat's IPO). Selling open source, and
 particularly GPL'd software is difficult, I don't think it can sustain
 many companies. I would not be surpised if the number of closed source
 companies (those selling at least SOME closed source software) outnumber
 the number of open source companies by 1000 to 1.

Linux is hardly the only project that is GPLed nor is it the best 
example of the use of GPL. there are many GPLed projects that provide 
companies with various business models for free (libre) software. I just 
used Red Hat as an example.

 I agree with you that there are zealots with that holier-than-thou
 attitude and that this really sucks. by saying - "I agree that the
 world could do just as good without GPL. Maybe it was necessary in the
 beginning, but not any more. " you just joined the group of zealots.

 I must be a zealot, I disagree with your opinion!

 I have no qualms working with GPLd or any other open source software.
 I'm probably the *least* zealous person when it comes to licensing. I
 just want to get work done, and stupid shit that gets in the way (such
 as refusing to fix your own bugs because of some political issue) annoys
 me.

 As I already said, in reality, both proprietary and free software are
 useful since they fulfill different requirements. saying otherwise is
 stupid and wrong.

 If you mean free as in FSF's meaining of "free" (i.e. copyleft), I think
 you are probably wrong (and heck, I'll throw in stupid too). But neither
 of us can be proven right because GPLd software isn't going away.

 -Steve

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:

On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:00:02 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>  
wrote:

 sources are not the only issue here. Linux is a monolithic kernel. that  
 means everything in it (including drivers) are one process. You already  
 know that. usually when you want to find (and fix) a problem, you'd use  
 a debugger which allows you to see the memory of the process. there's no  
 way to make the debugger show only the memory belonging to the open  
 source parts of the code. even if you just see the asm of that closed  
 source driver, it'd be reasonable to assume there may be someone evil  
 enough to sue you based on that.

No, it would not be reasonable.  In fact that would just be a nice fat  
paycheck for the plaintiff's lawyer (and probably the defendant's lawyer)  
and nothing else.

Nobody can expect someone to glimpse at machine code and later recall how  
it was coded so they can use it in their own code.  Not assembly, machine  
code.  This so-called defendant would have to specifically go looking for  
code in random memory, then either disassemble it or hand-parse the  
machine code.  I've debugged plenty of code on Microsoft's OS, and I  
haven't ever been sued, or had any worry of being sued, because I  
accidentally saw some of their disassembled code.  My interpretation of  
the non-support from these developers was "we don't like non-GPL'd  
software, so we aren't going to help you," not "Oh, well if we look at  
this binary code someone might sue us."  I think you are reading an issue  
into this that doesn't exist.

 people in the US sued MacDonald's because their coffee was hot (and they  
 even won the case!). other people sued a company since their peanuts  
 contains nuts. why would a developer is free to assume he/she won't be  
 sued for accidentally seeing the memory of that closed source driver in  
 the debugger?

Anyone can sue you for anything.  To say that they will win is another  
thing.  Nobody's going to sue someone for seeing machine code in memory  
that happens to be of proprietary software, not because they are nice, but  
because they'd have no case.

In the McDonald's case, the coffee was not just hot, the coffee caused 3rd  
degree burns, which required skin grafting.  The jury awarded punitive  
damages in excess of 2.8 million *not* at the request of the plaintiff,  
but because they believed McDonald's would not change their policy (of  
making their coffee 20-30 degrees hotter than any other vendor) unless  
they did so.  That is what punitive damages are for.  The lady only sought  
to have her medical costs covered (which McDonald's refused).  This case  
has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with copyright law, so I have no idea why you  
brought it up.  People always point to this case as an example of  
ridiculous judgements, but this one actually strikes me as fair.

Other examples of lawsuits are definitely frivolous.  If that peanut case  
is true, I'd use that one instead (it sounds too ridiculous to be true,  
I'd appreciate a citation).  But let's not forget you are citing a small  
number of bizarre cases in an ocean of lawsuits that actually make sense.   
To worry that someone might frivolously sue you is like worrying that you  
might trip over your shoelaces and so you don't ever wear shoes.

 I never said that open source software isn't important or useful. I just
 don't think you need the GPL to protect the openness of the software
 these days. In the beginning, there were very few people working on open
 source software, so GPL protected them, and did a good job of keeping
 the movement alive. Now there are a ton of people doing open source
 under a ton of licenses (many not GPL-like). If the GPL all of a sudden
 went away, would open source developers stop developing open source
 software or would they just switch to a different license? Is it that
 horrible if a company uses your open source software together with
 closed source software but still gives you credit?

 sometimes it is very horrible, and sometimes not. I'm not for  
 generalizations and think that each project should use the best license  
 for it. some projects should be GPLed , some not. GPL is not redundant  
 as you may claim since there are projects that use it. as I already  
 said, all kinds of licenses have a place in our world, and I strongly  
 disagree with the notion that only the licenses that you (or me) like  
 should exist.

My assertion is not that the GPL should be illegal or be forcibly removed,  
my assertion (and ESR's as I interpret it) is that GPL'd software doesn't  
foster as much productivity or usefulness as other open source licenses,  
and therefore should be avoided.  Why should anyone use GPL when there are  
much less restrictive licenses available?  The world is full of for-profit  
companies using open source software, and the vast majority of them don't  
touch GPL'd software unless they have to.  Why is that?

 "I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it [the GPL]"
 how do you explain Red-Hat's success? there are many many companies
 that gain a lot by using GPL and they are certainly not forced to use  
 it.

 Red hat has good software, that is why they are successful. They also
 sell their services for updates, AND I believe they have some non GPL'd
 enterprise software, but I'm not sure, I don't buy their stuff anymore.

 But I think you are wrong about the "many many" part. There are only 2
 companies selling Linux as fully open source software that I know of --
 Red Hat and SuSe. All the others have gone (and there were a lot of
 them, especially after Red Hat's IPO). Selling open source, and
 particularly GPL'd software is difficult, I don't think it can sustain
 many companies. I would not be surprised if the number of closed source
 companies (those selling at least SOME closed source software) outnumber
 the number of open source companies by 1000 to 1.

 Linux is hardly the only project that is GPLed nor is it the best  
 example of the use of GPL. there are many GPLed projects that provide  
 companies with various business models for free (libre) software. I just  
 used Red Hat as an example.

Sure, it is not the only project that is GPL'd, but it is one of the only  
GPL'd projects out there that is the basis of a successful company.  I  
don't really know of any others.  So here is a challenge, name 10 of those  
companies.

-Steve

Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Steven Schveighoffer
<schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:
 On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:00:02 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>
 wrote:

 people in the US sued MacDonald's because their coffee was hot (and they
 even won the case!). other people sued a company since their peanuts
 contains nuts.

 [...]
 Other examples of lawsuits are definitely frivolous. =A0If that peanut ca=

se is
 true, I'd use that one instead (it sounds too ridiculous to be true, I'd
 appreciate a citation).

Peanuts aren't actually nuts, you know.  They're legumes.  So there
might well be a case where the lable said "100% peanuts" and someone
allergic to nuts ate up, knowing that peanuts aren't in fact nuts.

--bb

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:

On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:03:02 -0400, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:

 On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Steven Schveighoffer
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:
 On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:00:02 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>
 wrote:

 people in the US sued MacDonald's because their coffee was hot (and  
 they
 even won the case!). other people sued a company since their peanuts
 contains nuts.

 [...]
 Other examples of lawsuits are definitely frivolous. �If that peanut  
 case is
 true, I'd use that one instead (it sounds too ridiculous to be true, I'd
 appreciate a citation).

 Peanuts aren't actually nuts, you know.  They're legumes.  So there
 might well be a case where the lable said "100% peanuts" and someone
 allergic to nuts ate up, knowing that peanuts aren't in fact nuts.

If someone was allergic to nuts, and they are going around eating peanuts  
because technically they aren't nuts, I'd say they were in fact nuts :)

I'd be hugely hugely surprised if any jury awarded a judgement based on  
that.

-Steve

Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 7:09 AM, Steven Schveighoffer
<schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:
 On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:03:02 -0400, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote=

:
 On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Steven Schveighoffer
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:
 On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:00:02 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>
 wrote:

 people in the US sued MacDonald's because their coffee was hot (and th=




ey
 even won the case!). other people sued a company since their peanuts
 contains nuts.

 [...]
 Other examples of lawsuits are definitely frivolous. =A0If that peanut =



case
 is
 true, I'd use that one instead (it sounds too ridiculous to be true, I'=



d
 appreciate a citation).

 Peanuts aren't actually nuts, you know. =A0They're legumes. =A0So there
 might well be a case where the lable said "100% peanuts" and someone
 allergic to nuts ate up, knowing that peanuts aren't in fact nuts.

 If someone was allergic to nuts, and they are going around eating peanuts
 because technically they aren't nuts, I'd say they were in fact nuts :)

 I'd be hugely hugely surprised if any jury awarded a judgement based on
 that.

Yeh, I'm not saying I think they would, or even should win, just that
the idea of someone suing over peanuts containing nuts is not quite as
ridiculous, self-contradictory, and unbelievable as it first sounds.
In the US at least all kinds of foods that aren't nuts contain the
disclaimer "This product may contain nuts".   I suspect the prevalence
of such labels is because of some lawsuit at some point.

--bb

"Joel C. Salomon" <joelcsalomon gmail.com> writes:

Bill Baxter wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 7:09 AM, Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy yahoo.com>
wrote:
 On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:03:02 -0400, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 Peanuts aren't actually nuts, you know.  They're legumes.  So there
 might well be a case where the lable said "100% peanuts" and someone
 allergic to nuts ate up, knowing that peanuts aren't in fact nuts.

 If someone was allergic to nuts, and they are going around eating peanuts
 because technically they aren't nuts, I'd say they were in fact nuts :)

 I'd be hugely hugely surprised if any jury awarded a judgement based on
 that.

 
 Yeh, I'm not saying I think they would, or even should win, just that
 the idea of someone suing over peanuts containing nuts is not quite as
 ridiculous, self-contradictory, and unbelievable as it first sounds.
 In the US at least all kinds of foods that aren't nuts contain the
 disclaimer "This product may contain nuts".   I suspect the prevalence
 of such labels is because of some lawsuit at some point.

People allergic to (pea)nuts are sometimes so sensitive that the trace
crumbs left in the processing machinery from a different run are enough
to cause reactions.

That said, in /Inferno/ and /Escape From Hell/, Niven & Pournelle have a
lawyer in the Eighth Circle, Fifth Bolgia (Barrators and Grafters) who
“enriched himself from those who did not put silly warnings on lawn
mowers”.  There is Justice to be had…

—Joel Salomon

Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:09:21 -0400, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:03:02 -0400, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 
 On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Steven Schveighoffer
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:
 On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:00:02 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>
 wrote:

 people in the US sued MacDonald's because their coffee was hot (and  
 they
 even won the case!). other people sued a company since their peanuts
 contains nuts.

 [...]
 Other examples of lawsuits are definitely frivolous. �If that peanut  
 case is
 true, I'd use that one instead (it sounds too ridiculous to be true, I'd
 appreciate a citation).

 Peanuts aren't actually nuts, you know.  They're legumes.  So there
 might well be a case where the lable said "100% peanuts" and someone
 allergic to nuts ate up, knowing that peanuts aren't in fact nuts.

 
 If someone was allergic to nuts, and they are going around eating peanuts  
 because technically they aren't nuts, I'd say they were in fact nuts :)
 
 I'd be hugely hugely surprised if any jury awarded a judgement based on  
 that.

I'd expect an allergic person to be very well aware of what's dangerous
to them, and therefore to know exactly the difference between nuts and
peanuts.  People tend to know a lot of things in the areas of their
interest, for whatever reasons the interest is.

Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:

On 31/03/2009 00:36, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 No, it would not be reasonable. In fact that would just be a nice fat
 paycheck for the plaintiff's lawyer (and probably the defendant's
 lawyer) and nothing else.

 Nobody can expect someone to glimpse at machine code and later recall
 how it was coded so they can use it in their own code. Not assembly,
 machine code. This so-called defendant would have to specifically go
 looking for code in random memory, then either disassemble it or
 hand-parse the machine code. I've debugged plenty of code on Microsoft's
 OS, and I haven't ever been sued, or had any worry of being sued,
 because I accidentally saw some of their disassembled code. My
 interpretation of the non-support from these developers was "we don't
 like non-GPL'd software, so we aren't going to help you," not "Oh, well
 if we look at this binary code someone might sue us." I think you are
 reading an issue into this that doesn't exist.

what if the defendant doesn't have/want to spend that money on lawyers?
even if the chance is tiny, it is not zero.
besides, even if I'm completely wrong on this and you're completely 
right (which I don't believe to be the case), you're forgetting that 
those developers are all volonteers working on the project on their 
spare time. They don't have to do anything at all. sure it sucks they 
don't want to help you out but they are not under any obligation to do 
so. That reminds me a phrase: "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth".

 people in the US sued MacDonald's because their coffee was hot (and
 they even won the case!). other people sued a company since their
 peanuts contains nuts. why would a developer is free to assume he/she
 won't be sued for accidentally seeing the memory of that closed source
 driver in the debugger?

 Anyone can sue you for anything. To say that they will win is another
 thing. Nobody's going to sue someone for seeing machine code in memory
 that happens to be of proprietary software, not because they are nice,
 but because they'd have no case.

 In the McDonald's case, the coffee was not just hot, the coffee caused
 3rd degree burns, which required skin grafting. The jury awarded
 punitive damages in excess of 2.8 million *not* at the request of the
 plaintiff, but because they believed McDonald's would not change their
 policy (of making their coffee 20-30 degrees hotter than any other
 vendor) unless they did so. That is what punitive damages are for. The
 lady only sought to have her medical costs covered (which McDonald's
 refused). This case has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with copyright law, so
 I have no idea why you brought it up. People always point to this case
 as an example of ridiculous judgements, but this one actually strikes me
 as fair.

 Other examples of lawsuits are definitely frivolous. If that peanut case
 is true, I'd use that one instead (it sounds too ridiculous to be true,
 I'd appreciate a citation). But let's not forget you are citing a small
 number of bizarre cases in an ocean of lawsuits that actually make
 sense. To worry that someone might frivolously sue you is like worrying
 that you might trip over your shoelaces and so you don't ever wear shoes.

I don't have a citation for this, sorry. In British law and therefore 
our law in Israel (which was influenced by the British) there is a 
concept of "a reasonable man", I'm pretty sure this also applies to 
European law as well. The idea is that a reasonable man as understood by 
the law knows that peanuts are a kind of nuts. therefore these kinds of 
frivolous cases are dismissed and  will never reach court and waste 
time/money. this is missing in the US where anyone can sue anyone else 
for anything.
this concept can also aid people in their cases. for example, there was 
one case of a man suing his insurance company for not paying for an 
implant (heart I think). the company said in the policy that all 
implants are covered but in the small letters said it will not pay for a 
very specific equipment part that is essential to that operation. a 
reasonable man doesn't need a M.D to sign such a policy and therefore 
the company had to pay.


 My assertion is not that the GPL should be illegal or be forcibly
 removed, my assertion (and ESR's as I interpret it) is that GPL'd
 software doesn't foster as much productivity or usefulness as other open
 source licenses, and therefore should be avoided. Why should anyone use
 GPL when there are much less restrictive licenses available? The world
 is full of for-profit companies using open source software, and the vast
 majority of them don't touch GPL'd software unless they have to. Why is
 that?

you mix to separate things. a closed source company probably will not 
want to be a *client* of GPL-like source, sure. that's different from a 
company that uses GPL-like licenses for it's own products and code.

 Sure, it is not the only project that is GPL'd, but it is one of the
 only GPL'd projects out there that is the basis of a successful company.
 I don't really know of any others. So here is a challenge, name 10 of
 those companies.

come on.. why did Sun choose the GPL as the basis for almost all it's 
products over less restrictive licenses as you say?
Sun's products that are GPL'ed: Java, Netbeans, solaris, etc..  even the 
specs for their CPU are open sourced!
that telephony project, asterix (IIRC), provides jobs for many 
consultant companies on setting up your own telephony solution based on 
that project.
that's just of the top of my head without doing any search...



 -Steve

Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:

Yigal Chripun wrote:
 On 31/03/2009 00:36, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 Sure, it is not the only project that is GPL'd, but it is one of the
 only GPL'd projects out there that is the basis of a successful company.
 I don't really know of any others. So here is a challenge, name 10 of
 those companies.

 come on.. why did Sun choose the GPL as the basis for almost all it's 
 products over less restrictive licenses as you say?
 Sun's products that are GPL'ed: Java, Netbeans, solaris, etc..  even the 
 specs for their CPU are open sourced!
 that telephony project, asterix (IIRC), provides jobs for many 
 consultant companies on setting up your own telephony solution based on 
 that project.
 that's just of the top of my head without doing any search...
 

And notice that they actually used the Classpath Exception so that end 
users wouldn't be forced to GPL their products, which would have 
basically been a disaster. Makes one wonder why they chose GPL in the 
first place if they were just going to neutralize it.

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:02:03 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>  
wrote:

 On 31/03/2009 00:36, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 No, it would not be reasonable. In fact that would just be a nice fat
 paycheck for the plaintiff's lawyer (and probably the defendant's
 lawyer) and nothing else.

 Nobody can expect someone to glimpse at machine code and later recall
 how it was coded so they can use it in their own code. Not assembly,
 machine code. This so-called defendant would have to specifically go
 looking for code in random memory, then either disassemble it or
 hand-parse the machine code. I've debugged plenty of code on Microsoft's
 OS, and I haven't ever been sued, or had any worry of being sued,
 because I accidentally saw some of their disassembled code. My
 interpretation of the non-support from these developers was "we don't
 like non-GPL'd software, so we aren't going to help you," not "Oh, well
 if we look at this binary code someone might sue us." I think you are
 reading an issue into this that doesn't exist.

 what if the defendant doesn't have/want to spend that money on lawyers?

It's typical to counter-sue for attorney fees.  That is generally what  
happens when a big fish goes after a little fish (and loses).

 even if the chance is tiny, it is not zero.

Ok, I guess you got me there :)

 besides, even if I'm completely wrong on this and you're completely  
 right (which I don't believe to be the case), you're forgetting that  
 those developers are all volonteers working on the project on their  
 spare time. They don't have to do anything at all. sure it sucks they  
 don't want to help you out but they are not under any obligation to do  
 so. That reminds me a phrase: "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth".

Yeah, they can do whatever they want, I understand that, but that actually  
makes their project less attractive to companies because one of the huge  
benefits of open-source development is the community support.  If they  
decide not to support you because of some reason unrelated to the problem  
at hand, then you are screwed.  As it turned out, we had a solution,  
simply GPL our driver.  Not the one I would have preferred, but it worked  
nonetheless.


 people in the US sued MacDonald's because their coffee was hot (and
 they even won the case!). other people sued a company since their
 peanuts contains nuts. why would a developer is free to assume he/she
 won't be sued for accidentally seeing the memory of that closed source
 driver in the debugger?

 Anyone can sue you for anything. To say that they will win is another
 thing. Nobody's going to sue someone for seeing machine code in memory
 that happens to be of proprietary software, not because they are nice,
 but because they'd have no case.

 In the McDonald's case, the coffee was not just hot, the coffee caused
 3rd degree burns, which required skin grafting. The jury awarded
 punitive damages in excess of 2.8 million *not* at the request of the
 plaintiff, but because they believed McDonald's would not change their
 policy (of making their coffee 20-30 degrees hotter than any other
 vendor) unless they did so. That is what punitive damages are for. The
 lady only sought to have her medical costs covered (which McDonald's
 refused). This case has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with copyright law, so
 I have no idea why you brought it up. People always point to this case
 as an example of ridiculous judgements, but this one actually strikes me
 as fair.

 Other examples of lawsuits are definitely frivolous. If that peanut case
 is true, I'd use that one instead (it sounds too ridiculous to be true,
 I'd appreciate a citation). But let's not forget you are citing a small
 number of bizarre cases in an ocean of lawsuits that actually make
 sense. To worry that someone might frivolously sue you is like worrying
 that you might trip over your shoelaces and so you don't ever wear  
 shoes.

 I don't have a citation for this, sorry. In British law and therefore  
 our law in Israel (which was influenced by the British) there is a  
 concept of "a reasonable man", I'm pretty sure this also applies to  
 European law as well.

I don't know much about law theory, but I'm sure there are provisions like  
this in U.S. law.  At the very least, you have a right to a trial decided  
by 12 "reasonable men."

 The idea is that a reasonable man as understood by the law knows that  
 peanuts are a kind of nuts. therefore these kinds of frivolous cases are  
 dismissed and  will never reach court and waste time/money. this is  
 missing in the US where anyone can sue anyone else for anything.

It's a bad trend I think that lawsuits have become so common.  I think  
there are definitely problems with the liberal views that many judges have  
in our country, which fuels this kind of thing.  Here is a good example:  
Two border crossing agents shot a man who was smuggling 800 lbs of  
marijuana into the US from Mexico.  Those two agents got 12 years in  
prison for that, and the smuggler is suing the US government for 5 million  
(oh, he was given immunity for his smuggling activities).  This kind of  
shit makes me feel like we have huge issues in our justice system.

But I still would not be afraid of debugging code that had proprietary  
portions for fear of being sued.  I don't think anybody who is not  
unreasonably paranoid is afraid in this way.

 My assertion is not that the GPL should be illegal or be forcibly
 removed, my assertion (and ESR's as I interpret it) is that GPL'd
 software doesn't foster as much productivity or usefulness as other open
 source licenses, and therefore should be avoided. Why should anyone use
 GPL when there are much less restrictive licenses available? The world
 is full of for-profit companies using open source software, and the vast
 majority of them don't touch GPL'd software unless they have to. Why is
 that?

 you mix to separate things. a closed source company probably will not  
 want to be a *client* of GPL-like source, sure. that's different from a  
 company that uses GPL-like licenses for it's own products and code.

But isn't that the point of GPL?  To make developers who use it GPL  
everything that touches it?  I just think it's not a good move to GPL code  
unless you don't want it to be heavily used commercially, unless your  
project is the ONLY one out there that does what it does.  However, as  
soon as something comes along that is open source and NOT GPL, I'd be  
surprised if your project lasted much longer.

 Sure, it is not the only project that is GPL'd, but it is one of the
 only GPL'd projects out there that is the basis of a successful company.
 I don't really know of any others. So here is a challenge, name 10 of
 those companies.

 come on.. why did Sun choose the GPL as the basis for almost all it's  
 products over less restrictive licenses as you say?
 Sun's products that are GPL'ed: Java, Netbeans, solaris, etc..  even the  
 specs for their CPU are open sourced!

The only one in this list (after doing some research) that is released  
under the GPL is Java.  The others are under CDDL, which does not forbid  
linking closed source software with CDDL licensed software.  It only  
requires that the CDDL software remain CDDL.  I don't consider this to  
have the same issues as GPL.

Why did sun release Java under GPL?  Probably due to community pressure  
(been there).  I wonder how much benefit Sun has gained from making Java  
GPL, they certainly did very well with Java when it was not GPL.

 that telephony project, asterix (IIRC), provides jobs for many  
 consultant companies on setting up your own telephony solution based on  
 that project.
 that's just of the top of my head without doing any search...

I'll give you that one, so that's 2 projects that make companies money,  
asterisk and Linux.  However, I'm not sure it's the license that makes  
these companies money, another less restrictive open source license  
probably would suffice.

-Steve

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

"Georg Wrede" <georg.wrede iki.fi> wrote in message 
news:gqiq8o$2b5m$1 digitalmars.com...
 Seems BSD should be Our Way:

 [...] has a downside, the downside is that people, especially lawyers, 
 especially corporate bosses look at the GPL and experience fear. Fear that 
 all of their corporate secrets, business knowledge, and special sauce will 
 suddenly be everted to the outside world by some inadvertent slip by some 
 internal code. I think that fear is now costing us more than the 
 threat[...]

 http://osnews.com/story/21192/ESR_GPL_No_Longer_Needed

Shoot, *I* look at the GPL and experience fear. Not fear of loosing secrets 
(I'm not usually real big on the idea of secret knowledge), but fear of that 
giant inscrutable wall of legalese (compare that to the BSD/MIT or zlib 
licenses) and fear of not being able to make a living writing code just 
because something might get "tainted" by the GPL. (The whole idea of "free 
as in freedom software" not also implying "free as in beer" (Side note: 
since when is beer free?) is complete bullocks.) (And yes, I just used the 
word "bullocks". I'm in a weird mood...) 

dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> writes:

== Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a a.a)'s article
(Side note:
 since when is beer free?) is complete bullocks.)

I've explained this to people several times before because others have been
confused by it, too.  Free as in
beer means free as in "Dude, I'm going to the frat party to get smashed because
there's free beer."  Yes,
there is a cost associated with brewing that beer.  Yes, the frat house had to
pay for the keg.  However,
_you_ don't have to pay for it.  To you, the fact that the beer cost _someone
else_ money is an
implementation detail.  All you know/care about is that the interface to the
beer keg does not require
money, and thus you can get smashed for free.

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

"dsimcha" <dsimcha yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:gqj4a0$2smd$1 digitalmars.com...
 == Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a a.a)'s article
 (Side note:
 since when is beer free?) is complete bullocks.)

 I've explained this to people several times before because others have 
 been confused by it, too.  Free as in
 beer means free as in "Dude, I'm going to the frat party to get smashed 
 because there's free beer."  Yes,
 there is a cost associated with brewing that beer.  Yes, the frat house 
 had to pay for the keg.  However,
 _you_ don't have to pay for it.  To you, the fact that the beer cost 
 _someone else_ money is an
 implementation detail.  All you know/care about is that the interface to 
 the beer keg does not require
 money, and thus you can get smashed for free.

Oh, I realize that. I was just being a smart-ass. ;) 

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 (The whole idea of "free 
 as in freedom software" not also implying "free as in beer" (Side note: 
 since when is beer free?) is complete bullocks.) (And yes, I just used the 
 word "bullocks". I'm in a weird mood...)

I always thought the "free as in beer" came from this: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Froggy_Evening

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

"Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:gqj7kh$ll$1 digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 (The whole idea of "free as in freedom software" not also implying "free 
 as in beer" (Side note: since when is beer free?) is complete bullocks.) 
 (And yes, I just used the word "bullocks". I'm in a weird mood...)

 I always thought the "free as in beer" came from this: 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Froggy_Evening

*shrug* For all I know it could have come from that. But one thing I do 
know: Chuck Jones is an animation god :) 

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
 news:gqj7kh$ll$1 digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 (The whole idea of "free as in freedom software" not also implying "free 
 as in beer" (Side note: since when is beer free?) is complete bullocks.) 
 (And yes, I just used the word "bullocks". I'm in a weird mood...)

 I always thought the "free as in beer" came from this: 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Froggy_Evening

 
 *shrug* For all I know it could have come from that. But one thing I do 
 know: Chuck Jones is an animation god :)

I attended a lecture by him once. He's also engaging and a very nice 
man. The crowd loved him, and he deserved it.

Alix Pexton <alix.pexton gmail.com> writes:

Walter Bright wrote:
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
 news:gqj7kh$ll$1 digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 (The whole idea of "free as in freedom software" not also implying 
 "free as in beer" (Side note: since when is beer free?) is complete 
 bullocks.) (And yes, I just used the word "bullocks". I'm in a weird 
 mood...)

 I always thought the "free as in beer" came from this: 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Froggy_Evening

 *shrug* For all I know it could have come from that. But one thing I 
 do know: Chuck Jones is an animation god :)

 
 I attended a lecture by him once. He's also engaging and a very nice 
 man. The crowd loved him, and he deserved it.

My interpretation of the phrase "Free, as in beer" is that the beer is 
free, whenever it is not your round. When it is your turn to go to the 
bar, it's everyone but you that gets free beer. In this context, "Free 
Software" is that which is produced by a community where each member 
makes a contribution in turn, either trough creating or testing, and as 
a result everyone shares the benefit.

A...

Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:

Alix Pexton wrote:
 Walter Bright wrote:
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
 news:gqj7kh$ll$1 digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 (The whole idea of "free as in freedom software" not also implying 
 "free as in beer" (Side note: since when is beer free?) is complete 
 bullocks.) (And yes, I just used the word "bullocks". I'm in a 
 weird mood...)

 I always thought the "free as in beer" came from this: 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Froggy_Evening

 *shrug* For all I know it could have come from that. But one thing I 
 do know: Chuck Jones is an animation god :)

 I attended a lecture by him once. He's also engaging and a very nice 
 man. The crowd loved him, and he deserved it.

 
 My interpretation of the phrase "Free, as in beer" is that the beer is 
 free, whenever it is not your round. When it is your turn to go to the 
 bar, it's everyone but you that gets free beer. In this context, "Free 
 Software" is that which is produced by a community where each member 
 makes a contribution in turn, either trough creating or testing, and as 
 a result everyone shares the benefit.
 
 A...

I think everyone is reading too much into it. The point is simply to 
distinguish between gratis and libre. There's no suitable adjective to 
distinguish them in English (other than the two words themselves, which 
aren't widely used), as "free" is used to mean both. Beer is a product 
that is often given /gratis/, and the phrase "free beer" is used often 
enough ("Sure I'll come to your 
party/dinner/barbecue/your-favorite-social-event. I'm not one to turn 
down free beer!") that it gets the message across quite effectively. You 
could substitute any product for beer to the same end, but the meaning 
wouldn't be as immediately obvious methinks.

At least, that's always been my understanding. Of course, you'd have to 
ask Richard Stallman since, IIRC, it was he who first started using the 
idea of free speech vs. free beer to promote Free Software.

Alix Pexton <alix.pexton gmail.com> writes:

Mike Parker wrote:
 Alix Pexton wrote:
 Walter Bright wrote:
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
 news:gqj7kh$ll$1 digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 (The whole idea of "free as in freedom software" not also implying 
 "free as in beer" (Side note: since when is beer free?) is 
 complete bullocks.) (And yes, I just used the word "bullocks". I'm 
 in a weird mood...)

 I always thought the "free as in beer" came from this: 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Froggy_Evening

 *shrug* For all I know it could have come from that. But one thing I 
 do know: Chuck Jones is an animation god :)

 I attended a lecture by him once. He's also engaging and a very nice 
 man. The crowd loved him, and he deserved it.

 My interpretation of the phrase "Free, as in beer" is that the beer is 
 free, whenever it is not your round. When it is your turn to go to the 
 bar, it's everyone but you that gets free beer. In this context, "Free 
 Software" is that which is produced by a community where each member 
 makes a contribution in turn, either trough creating or testing, and 
 as a result everyone shares the benefit.

 A...

 
 I think everyone is reading too much into it. The point is simply to 
 distinguish between gratis and libre. There's no suitable adjective to 
 distinguish them in English (other than the two words themselves, which 
 aren't widely used), as "free" is used to mean both. Beer is a product 
 that is often given /gratis/, and the phrase "free beer" is used often 
 enough ("Sure I'll come to your 
 party/dinner/barbecue/your-favorite-social-event. I'm not one to turn 
 down free beer!") that it gets the message across quite effectively. You 
 could substitute any product for beer to the same end, but the meaning 
 wouldn't be as immediately obvious methinks.
 
 At least, that's always been my understanding. Of course, you'd have to 
 ask Richard Stallman since, IIRC, it was he who first started using the 
 idea of free speech vs. free beer to promote Free Software.

Who pays for the beer when it is you who hosts the party?

A...

Brad Roberts <braddr puremagic.com> writes:

Alix Pexton wrote:
 Mike Parker wrote:
 Alix Pexton wrote:
 Walter Bright wrote:
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:gqj7kh$ll$1 digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 (The whole idea of "free as in freedom software" not also
 implying "free as in beer" (Side note: since when is beer free?)
 is complete bullocks.) (And yes, I just used the word "bullocks".
 I'm in a weird mood...)

 I always thought the "free as in beer" came from this:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Froggy_Evening

 *shrug* For all I know it could have come from that. But one thing
 I do know: Chuck Jones is an animation god :)

 I attended a lecture by him once. He's also engaging and a very nice
 man. The crowd loved him, and he deserved it.

 My interpretation of the phrase "Free, as in beer" is that the beer
 is free, whenever it is not your round. When it is your turn to go to
 the bar, it's everyone but you that gets free beer. In this context,
 "Free Software" is that which is produced by a community where each
 member makes a contribution in turn, either trough creating or
 testing, and as a result everyone shares the benefit.

 A...

 I think everyone is reading too much into it. The point is simply to
 distinguish between gratis and libre. There's no suitable adjective to
 distinguish them in English (other than the two words themselves,
 which aren't widely used), as "free" is used to mean both. Beer is a
 product that is often given /gratis/, and the phrase "free beer" is
 used often enough ("Sure I'll come to your
 party/dinner/barbecue/your-favorite-social-event. I'm not one to turn
 down free beer!") that it gets the message across quite effectively.
 You could substitute any product for beer to the same end, but the
 meaning wouldn't be as immediately obvious methinks.

 At least, that's always been my understanding. Of course, you'd have
 to ask Richard Stallman since, IIRC, it was he who first started using
 the idea of free speech vs. free beer to promote Free Software.

 
 Who pays for the beer when it is you who hosts the party?
 
 A...

I would have thought that was obvious in a discussion on open source
metaphors.. you steal it.

Sorry,
Brad

dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> writes:

== Quote from Georg Wrede (georg.wrede iki.fi)'s article
 Seems BSD should be Our Way:
 [...] has a downside, the downside is that people, especially lawyers,
 especially corporate bosses look at the GPL and experience fear. Fear
 that all of their corporate secrets, business knowledge, and special
 sauce will suddenly be everted to the outside world by some inadvertent
 slip by some internal code. I think that fear is now costing us more
 than the threat[...]
 http://osnews.com/story/21192/ESR_GPL_No_Longer_Needed
 ........................
 Unrelated to this, but interesting, too:
 Microsoft Server/Tools boss Muglia said that "at some point, almost all
 our product(s) will have open source in (them)." He went on to say that
 "if MySQL (or) Linux do a better job for you, of course you should use
 those products."
 Well I'll be darned. I thought they'd get that like 5 years from now.
 (Hmm, maybe everybody should stick to the GPL, after all...)
 http://osnews.com/story/21053/Muglia_Open_Source_To_Permeate_Microsoft

Been thinking about this, and I think one of the things that the GPL really does
help with, for all its flaws, is resisting embrace, extend, extinguish tactics.
I'm not sure how practical it would be to make a license like the following
stand
up in court and be unambiguous, but here's a very informal plain English version
of a license that I think would in principle be a good compromise between
permissive and copyleft:

Anyone receiving this code may modify, redistribute it, etc. in both binary and
source form without any except those mentioned below.

All warranties are disclaimed.

If you redistribute modified versions of this code in proprietary/closed source
form, you must specify any information necessary to allow other similar software
to interoperate with your product.  This includes file formats, network
protocols,
etc.  You do not need to provide an implementation, only a reasonably
implementable specification.  Any modifications that do not affect
interoperability may be made and released with no strings attached.

Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:

Georg Wrede Wrote:
 
 Seems BSD should be Our Way:
 
 [...] has a downside, the downside is that people, especially lawyers, 
 especially corporate bosses look at the GPL and experience fear. Fear 
 that all of their corporate secrets, business knowledge, and special 
 sauce will suddenly be everted to the outside world by some inadvertent 
 slip by some internal code. I think that fear is now costing us more 
 than the threat[...]

This is a lie. There is just no way for cigarette-chomping executives to not
know, what are licenses and how they work.

Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 05:03:49 -0400, Kagamin wrote:

 Georg Wrede Wrote:
  
 Seems BSD should be Our Way:
 
 [...] has a downside, the downside is that people, especially lawyers, 
 especially corporate bosses look at the GPL and experience fear. Fear 
 that all of their corporate secrets, business knowledge, and special 
 sauce will suddenly be everted to the outside world by some inadvertent 
 slip by some internal code. I think that fear is now costing us more 
 than the threat[...]

 
 This is a lie. There is just no way for cigarette-chomping executives to not
know, what are licenses and how they work.

Sure they know.  They know too well that one wrong step, one ignorant
developer, and they may kiss good-bye to their precious intellectual
property.

Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:

Sergey Gromov Wrote:

 This is a lie. There is just no way for cigarette-chomping executives to not
know, what are licenses and how they work.

 
 Sure they know.  They know too well that one wrong step, one ignorant
 developer, and they may kiss good-bye to their precious intellectual
 property.

Your guess is wrong and you're far from their level :)

Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:15:24 -0400, Kagamin wrote:

 Sergey Gromov Wrote:
 
 This is a lie. There is just no way for cigarette-chomping executives to not
know, what are licenses and how they work.

 
 Sure they know.  They know too well that one wrong step, one ignorant
 developer, and they may kiss good-bye to their precious intellectual
 property.

 
 Your guess is wrong and you're far from their level :)

Oh you know me too well.  Probably you also know the color of my
underwear.  I give up.