From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,52a0bacbcdd2da17 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-08-12 06:48:17 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newspeer.monmouth.com!nntp.abs.net!ash.uu.net!spool.news.uu.net!not-for-mail Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 09:48:16 -0400 From: Hyman Rosen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030611 Thunderbird/0.1a X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment. References: <3F367B39.8060108@noplace.com> <1060611604.45048@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3F38DEBC.8040208@noplace.com> In-Reply-To: <3F38DEBC.8040208@noplace.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: KBC Financial Products Message-ID: <1060696097.54858@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> Cache-Post-Path: master.nyc.kbcfp.com!unknown@nightcrawler.nyc.kbcfp.com X-Cache: nntpcache 3.0.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.253.250.10 X-Trace: 1060696096 15071 204.253.250.10 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:41340 Date: 2003-08-12T09:48:16-04:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic wrote: > Well, I don't dispute that the GPL can be successfully used in > developing and marketing a product. Good. > I simply dispute that it is the only "right" way to develop and > market a product. Good, since it is not, except in the view of a very few people. > I also dispute the notion that someone like RedHat didn't > effectively get their engineering work done free of charge > by a group of developers who released their work under the GPL. That depends on what you consider RedHat's product to be. I think that their product is the distribution - that is, the rational assembly of the available GNU/Linux elements into a system whereby it can be readily installed, updated, and maintained, and also support for that distribution. Under that point of view, they didn't get that much for free, and built a lot for themselves. I find your point of view similar to denigrating Ansel Adams because he had nothing to do with creating the scenery which he photographed. > The guys who developed it can stare at RedHat's profit line > and wish they had it RedHat is a struggling company, and their profit, when they have it, is tenuous. Investors in RedHat have a significant risk of losing a large part, or perhaps all, of their money. RedHat makes money by providing support. Other people are free to do the same. The people behind BeOS followed your model. They kept their code proprietary and closed, and attempted to profit off the the fruits of their labor instead of giving it away. Now the company is out of business and the software is dead. > provided it was not used for some form of commercial gain What you fail to see is that no one wants to be bothered with this, trying to keep track of a myriad different licenses, and trying to figure out what constitutes commercial gain, what constitutes making bombs, and all the other idiosyncracies that people toss into their licenses. Releasing under such a license will get you just as ignored as if you did not release at all. It's possible that things might be different if you released some enormously useful piece of software under such a license that people found so necessary that they would jump through hoops to get it, but how many times doe sthat happen? > if someone develops software that another party wants to use to > make a profit, the developer ought to get something out of it. And I say again that the logistics of trying to do this, especially for products which are agglomerations of hundreds of such packages, are so onerous that no distributor would bother incorporating any but the most important ones.