At 10:03 AM 2/19/02 +0100, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer wrote:
It *IS* a fair point of view - if someone just adds a bit of value, why should they be able to make loads of cash of the much bigger original work without giving anything back?
No one will make loads of cash by just adding a bit of value. Why? Simply because no one would pay them much for that. It would be simpler to add that bit of value yourself or hire a programmer to do that in a weekend. People would only pay for big improvements, like Lindows, they invested around 5 million AFAIK.
Selling a proprietary fork of an open source application is much more like stealing a car, giving it a new paint, and then selling it. The thief added value (the new paint), so by your argumentation, he should be able to make money of it and what he's doing is perfectly ok.
First of all, you cannot steal something that is already free. But lets apply the rest of your analogy: Suppose the car is under a BSD license, which means everyone can get one for free. Now, someone gets the car, gives it a new paint and sells that product. How much would you pay him? Of course, since you can get that very same car for free also, you would only pay him the amount equivalent for the paint + the work involved in painting. If he wanted to charge you 10.000 for the painted car, you would laugh on his face, get that car for free and paint it yourself over the weekend(or pay someone else to do that). But if he charged you 40 $, you would probably pay him, since he as a professional would do a better job and you wouldn't have to make your hands dirty. In effect that 40 would probably be cheaper than the money it would cost you to do the job yourself, if you also count the time investment necessary on your side. So I think this business model is perfectly ok! This is the great advantage of the BSD license. It enables business. With the BSD license applied to your analogy we soon would have lots of businesses created to enhance the car: Painting, Putting sound equipment to the car, increasing the engine power, etc...Customers interested in one enhancement or the other would be willing to pay for it. Eventually one enhancement would be so popular that a group of volunteers would integrate it into the original car.
What would be the GPL equivalent in your analogy: you can have the car for free, but any enhancements you make have to be given back at 0 cost also. Now suppose a guy wants to make the paint job. He will have to make it for free! So no one would do that of course. The result of this would be that if you want to paint the car you will have to do it yourself. Or you have to wait till someone else wants to do it and give it back for free afterwards. The GPL discourages business... Of course there are still business models possible, though restricted, for example: you hire the guy for painting the car as you wish. But that means you pay him in advance. And if this has been done once...no one else has to pay for it again...
The GPL prevents this from happening but where is the advantage in that?
Forcing everyone to contribute, preventing this type of theft.
As I said, you cannot steal what is already free.
They are, if they choose to go by sane licenses. Releasing products as Open Source certainly hasn't hurt companies that aren't scared of doing it.
Hmm, that might be true in some cases, especially where the software requires some kind of specialized support, where you pay more for the support than the software itself.
The problem is that many companies refuse to even consider sane licenses, not that they couldn't do it.
I don't consider the xGPL to be that sane anymore.
Personally I keep wondering if it would be that bad if we had a company producing a better version of WINE than the free one. Why should this be bad?
- it would take users (and therefore potential developers) away from the real version.
If that was true no one would be making Mozilla, OpenOffice, even Linux. When Linux started the proprietary Unix was MUCH better. History showed, that the opensource Linux was capable of catching up with UNIX and even become better.
- why should someone who made just a couple of changes make lots of profit from (mostly) someone else's work without giving anything back to that someone else? It's certainly not fair.
Read above again. If you want to make big money you will have to invest MUCH. It is fair to get a corresponding return for that.
I dare to claim that Linux distributors have done a lot more for Linux
than Apple has done for the BSDs, partially because licenses forced them to give back rather than just keeping things closed.
I wonder how profitable the Linux distributions are...and will be in the long run...
Roland