Gavriel State gav@transgaming.com wrote:
Quite the opposite: It is not 'competitive advantage' that concerns us, or others using our code without contributing their own code. It is simply that we could not and cannot afford to do our development without monetary compensation. If the OLE DLLs had been LGPLed, we could not have been able to afford to do any DCOM work, since we would have had no prospect of getting paid for it.
Under the LGPL, the only possible business model is this: a) Find someone who might need some piece of code b) Sell them on: "We can do this for you, and release it under the LGPL for $x dollars. We're really good at what we do, honest" c) Do the work, and hope to actually get paid.
well, a)+b) is really the same, and you left out d) sell support on the changes, but yes, there are only 3 choices. I really think that *GPL will have problems in the long term because there is no real economic way to sustain it, but it's going to take VAlinux/SUSE/RedHat to finally go down in flames for people to take a long, hard look at the issue. Think the patent model (with a much shorter protection period) is a good place to start.
The LGPL simply slams the door shut on that whole model, saying in effect "It's my way or the highway".
It also slams the door shut to non-development areas too.
-r
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Roger Fujii