Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

One more time... with feeling. :-) This has absolutely nothing to do 
with my point. Yes, the developers *did* give their permission. *No* 
they have no right to complain having done so. *Yes* RedHat is totally 
within its rights and hasn't done anything wrong.

The *point* is, a body of software developed by one party has *value* 
and that if it is used by another party in a for-profit venture, the 
other party is getting a contribution to his business without any 
compensation being given to the author. Why that isn't plainly obvvious 
to even the most casual observer, I don't know. What the GPL does to 
somehow or other stop the software contribution from having value, I 
don't know. The software has value. You use it to make a profit. You 
give nothing to the author. It isn't illegal when its under the GPL. It 
doesn't defraud the original developer who voluntarily gave away his 
valuable property to you in the first place. It simply means that the 
developer wasn't compensated when the developer had every moral right to 
have insisted on it had he not voluntarily done some charity work for 
your business venture.

Like I said elsewhere, people have an absolute God-given right to freely 
do charity work for business ventures if they so choose. I'd question 
the wisdom of that and wouldn't do so myself, because my work has value 
and if you want to use it to make money, you'll have to share it with 
me. But that's just me. ;-)

MDC

Hyman Rosen wrote:

> 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?
> 

-- 
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

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     to the other."

         --  Voltaire
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