Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
 > I suppose it is all right for me to assemble various digital recordings

The difference is that the bands you mention didn't give anyone
permission to do this, while the software developers did. But
you know that, obviously, so what is your purpose in drawing this
analogy? Are you trying to say that the developers didn't give
this permission? That they were duped? All of them?

> Oh, yes. I nearly forgot. Microsoft followed the model you outlined (not
> mine - the proprietary and closed model) and last I checked they had
> money coming out of their ... ears. Seems like that model *can* be the
> right one in at least some cases.

Everyone wants to be Microsoft. But most people who try wind up
being BeOS.

 > I also never said that companies want to deal with a
> few thousand different developers or different licenses.

Compnaies that make and distribute Linux distributions,
or BSD distributions for that matter, normally have
hundreds and perhaps thousands of packages in their
distribution. Those are the companies I was talking
about.

 > Systems have been set up to distribute copyrighted material
 > and compensate authors that don't leave individuals or
 > companies having to cut a thousand deals to use some product.

Congratulations! You have rediscovered Richard Stallman's
software tax idea. In any case, no one is stopping people
from setting up such systems. You could even try to do it
yourself. You will discover that a major problem is that
there is so little money to be made that the effort to
collect it will be more expensive than what you get.

Writing a piece of software and releasing it under the GPL
is infinitely easier than writing a piece of software and
trying to make money from it. The fact that some compnaies
are managing to earn money selling GNU/Linux distributions
may give some people the illusion that there is money to
be made in individual software packages, and for some tiny
percentage that would even be true. But not fro most.

> Most of the stuff that gets released under the GPL is really
 > not all that special or wonderful that someone is going to pay
> $$$ to get it

But they don't have to. And meanwhile, as long as the project
has some signs of life, distributors will pick it up and package
it, so it will be out there for anyone who might want it.

 > companies may look at the GPL and not want to infect their own
 > code with it and say "The R&D cost to build my own unit isn't
 > that huge, so why should I use a GPLed unit?"

One goal of the FSF is to have enough good GPLed code out so that
this cost differential becomes ever larger. In any case, no one
is stopping them from doing anything they want.

> Hence whatever scheme got adopted, it needs to be simple and
 > inexpensive.

Which means that the developers won't be paid much.

> And it isn't any different for GPLed code.

Anything under the GPL can just be distributed without a
second thought. It's very different from Joe's Own Version
of the No-Bomb Pay-Me-If-You-Use-It license.

> Your presumption is that the model for constructing software

How did we switch to talking about constructing software?
We were talking about RedHat, whose basic product *is* an
assembled conglomerate of the random work of hundreds or
thousands of people.