On Mon, 18 Feb 2002, Roland wrote:
I think one of the main reason for the xGPL is that
developers have the
fear that their project might be hijacked and their work
used to make
profit by some companies. As Brett Glass pointed out, this
is not a fair
point of view. After all if a companies adds value to a
project by creating
new features why shouldn't it be allowed to sell it and
make money out of
it?
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?
If somebody just adds a _bit_ of value and are able to make loads of cash on it I or somebody else are very likely to be easily able to duplicate the effort.
Try again.
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 copyright and theft have very little to do with each other. Theft by it definition involves depriving somebody from his property.
Secondly if the license is the current licence this is obviously legal.
Thirdly if it just requires a little "paint" to it make money I or somebody else can duplicate that and make the money instead.
The GPL prevents this from happening but where is the advantage in that?
Forcing everyone to contribute, preventing this type of theft.
What theft? There is no theft going on.
With the LGPL copyright infringement might be going on but then as I have trying to explain in countless mails it is easy to circumvent it even with obviously "trickery" that is obviously legal. If you trust your lawyers there are even more "trickery" you can do.
I think the GPL retricts software development because many good projects cannot be done by companies because they are not
allowed to use
any GPL code as basis of their products.
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.
On the contrary: Stronghold used to be proprietary before Red Hat bought the company making it. Now it's open source and the moment that happened, the sales numbers actually went UP (and the price is still roughly the same).
Stronghold was presumably a WORKING product. Wine is not. If you make comparisions compare situations that are similar.
The problem is that many companies refuse to even consider sane licenses, not that they couldn't do it.
Well, if that is a problem a complex license like LGPL certainly isn't the answer.
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.
What potential developers? If the source is closed they can't work on it. If the source is available like Transgamings why should they work for them without pay. Why not do as Marcus did and look at the code and reimplement it in the main tree instead. :-)
- 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.
Again, if somebody can make a couple of changes and make money I can duplicate it and make the money instead or for that matter post it on wine-patches.