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 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: 2003-08-13 05:35:09 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!harp.news.atl.earthlink.net!not-for-mail From: Marin David Condic Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment. Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:34:53 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Message-ID: <3F3A306D.4050302@noplace.com> References: <3F367B39.8060108@noplace.com> <1060611604.45048@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3F38DEBC.8040208@noplace.com> <1060696097.54858@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: d1.56.b8.3d Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Server-Date: 13 Aug 2003 12:35:08 GMT User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:41377 Date: 2003-08-13T12:35:08+00:00 List-Id: Hyman Rosen wrote: > > 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. > O.K. O I suppose it is all right for me to assemble various digital recordings from the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, et alia and come out with my own "Remember the 70's" Rock Anthology album and sell it wherever I can. I'm providing the *exact* same "service" that RedHat does and I owe nothing to the original artists? I got nothing of any real value from them because its all about the packaging and distribution? I think there would be people who would disagree with that position. And they'd have lawyers and district attorneys behind them too. > > RedHat is a struggling company, and their profit, when they have it, > is tenuous. Making a profit or not still does not alter my original claim that RedHat got their R&D done for them free of charge. There is more to making a profit than just R&D costs. Companies succeed or fail for all sorts of reasons. But in starting up a new venture, that initial product development cost is a very significant contribution to the venture. RedHat didn't spend any of their own money building that initial product. The developers who wrote it were the ones who funded that part of the venture and didn't get a single share in RedHat (or any of the other companies out there that package and sell Linux) > > 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. > Now you are misinterpreting "my model". I never said that my model had anything to do with "proprietary" or "closed". To the extent that I have a model, it would go like this: You can have this software in source form and use it and modify it and share it with your friends all day long. And I won't even *force* you to adopt my model if you decide to build some of your own software on top of my software. Your part of the software can be as proprietary and closed as you like. You just can't sell it in a product or bundle it with a "service" or whatever circumstance has my software adding value to your for-profit venture. If you wish to do so, come see me and we'll talk turkey about how much you'll pay me to get the right to incorporate my stuff in a for-profit venture. 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. > > 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. > 99.9% of all "open source" software out there gets ignored by commercial efforts. (And 86% of the people who quote statistics make them up as they go along. ;-) I also never said that companies want to deal with a few thousand different developers or different licenses. And I think that if you actually considered the idea as a possibility rather than dismiss it out of hand, you might be able to imagine a large number of ways in which it could be practical. When you buy a book - say a dictionary that had a large number of contributors - did you have to deal with each one to get the right to use that book? When you listen to the radio, did you have to personally get permission from each songwriter to use that music? 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. > 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? > In reality - about as often as it happens with GPLed material. Let's be realistic here. 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 - or even bother to use it at all. Even if it was moderately useful, 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?" In this respect, Dr. Leif's scheme of counting code and having a repository could be useful. It is not unlike ASCAP - pay for what you want to use commercially and the authors get compensated through the clearinghouse. Or it could be done through what would effectively amount to a publishing house - buy the copyrights from the authors for some nominal fee and pay them a royalty based on sales. In any event, you have a point about jumping through hoops. If the effort level for the user gets too high or the cost becomes too much, they abandon that path and develop their own. Hence whatever scheme got adopted, it needs to be simple and inexpensive. > > 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. > And I'll say again, Amen. And it isn't any different for GPLed code. And once again, I'll say that a solution does exist. Your presumption is that the model for constructing software is to have hundreds or thousands of developers each adding little bits and pieces in a totally uncoordinated way and someone then goes and assembles the whole conglomerate into a product. Since it is obvious that not all software is built this way, I'll suggest that other models might be used to construct useful products and/or distribute them. Not all software has much monetary value and the GPL is a fine enough way to distribute it. If you think that what you wrote *might* have some marketable potential, you might want to try a different model. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jast.mil/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g "In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." -- Voltaire ======================================================================