Re: In praise of Ada Freeware

[pontius@btv.MBI.com.invalid (Dale Pontius)]

In article <YXxb7.351$NJ6.884@www.newsranger.com>,
        Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:
> In article <5ee5b646.0108031815.599ecf37@posting.google.com>, Robert Dewar
> says...
>>
>>But this issue has been hotted up recently by Microsoft and Wind River
>>who have strongly favored the BSD license over the GPL, partly
>>because they want to use Free Software developed by others in their
>>own proprietary products.
>
> That's very interesting considering that, as near as I can tell, Wind River's
> entire business is built upon a foundation GPL'ed software. The version of
> Tornado I have uses both gcc and a customized gnu make.
>
There's an interesting perspective one can take with respect to the
GPL, from a corporate perspective:

First off, nobody is an island, even corporations. Even if you buy a
lot of software, and are not a software company yourself, chances are
you still have a lot of custom software running around in-house. Even
more, SOME of this in-house software may be of interest to others,
and may help sell whatever you make as your core product/service.

THIS is the stuff that it makes sense to put under GPL. You don't
want to become responsible for it in the same way that you are for
for-sale products, yet you'd like to see it out there. At the worst,
it is a complete no-op to your bottom line. Even better, it may help
sell products that are on your bottom line. Better yet, it may also
devalue a competitor's product line by making free competition for
their for-sale product, (This is more likely if you're a niche
player and they are more diversified.) leaving you slightly stronger
in the areas where you are head-to-head.

Dale Pontius
NOT speaking for IBM