Hello all, with the ongoing discussion about this topic has brought me to think about licensing open source(OS) in general. I think a broad discussion involving all major OS advocates is long overdue. I think there should be made a webpage somewhere to start discussing this topic on a serious basis.
Two important licenses: 1. BSD-style 2. xGPL
Many projects are started with the xGPL nowadays. It just seems natural. Any other license for open source looks unnatural at first glance. I think the popularity of Linux has contributed to this. But is the xGPL a good license? 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? The GPL prevents this from happening but where is the advantage in that? 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. The sad thing is that this affects mostly small companies. Big companies can allow themselves to reinvent the wheel, coding everything they need. I think a lot of small businesses could do money out of open source if the licensing allowed this.
Linus Torvalds wrote: "But _personally_ I don't want to do significant work under that kind of copyright and having to wonder whether the best version of Wine will be free in the future.." http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ingo+Molnar+group:comp.emulators.ms-window...
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? If you don't like it, you still can use the free version. And look at FreeBSD. AFAIK there is no proprietary version better than the free version.
Apple based his OS X on lots of free software and contributed back a lot: http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
This wouldn't be possible with Linux I think.
Best regards, Roland
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?
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.
The GPL prevents this from happening but where is the advantage in that?
Forcing everyone to contribute, preventing this type of theft.
There are of course some sane compromises: - The Qt way of doing things - GPL the library, but sell different licensing. Forces everyone to contribute, if not through code, through paying those who do. - A GPLish license with an addition allowing for delays ("You must release the source to any modified version you make after 3 months") allows them to get the advantage of being the first on the market while making them contribute, sort of permitting what Transgaming does. The problem with this is that in 3 months, a lot can happen and chances are most patches won't apply anymore.
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).
The problem is that many companies refuse to even consider sane licenses, not that they couldn't do it.
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. - 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.
Apple based his OS X on lots of free software and contributed back a lot: http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
This wouldn't be possible with Linux I think.
See http://www.redhat.com/, http://www.suse.com/ and http://www.linux-mandrake.com/ for some counterexamples.
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. Apple still refuses to release their UI code - would you like to run a proprietary KDE or GNOME on your machine? That's what we might have if the licenses were BSD, and I know I'd hate it.
LLaP bero
On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer wrote:
Apple still refuses to release their UI code - would you like to run a proprietary KDE or GNOME on your machine? That's what we might have if the licenses were BSD, and I know I'd hate it.
Hi Bero,
On a related note, when are we going to get KDE3b2 binary RPMs for RH7.2? :))
The ones in rawhide don't install on 7.2 (obviously).
-- Dimi.
Roland wrote:
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? If you don't like it, you still can use the free version. And look at
I have no problem with a company producing a better product then Wine. I only have a problem with this if I contribute my time and brain to something in the believe that it will stay free to use for all and them some company comes along, takes all that work that has been done, adds a little bit and makes the big money from it because it's got a company name behind it. As long as it is willing to share something (money or code) then I have still no problem with it. Only if the company starts acting as if it did all that alone. Of course I've not THAT much contributed by now, but I think there are other who did and I don't know if they are so glad about this. I can't speak for them but I know that I don't want to be ripped.
It's just like being in a NG. Many people ask there for help and if I have time and know something I answer it because I know that, when I have a problem somebody else will do the same for me. If there was a company who use the NGs as a professional tool making money from the answers then I would be also quite annoyed because I don't want others to get rich by ripping free work off.
Apple based his OS X on lots of free software and contributed back a lot:
That's ok then. Personally I have no problem with a company making profit as long as it honours where it came from. And if they don't want to do that then they could very well do everything on their own. Then they would see how much work is involved.
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Bernhard Rosenkraenzer -
Dimitrie O. Paun -
Gerhard W. Gruber -
Roland