RE: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

["Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com>]

Again, there is this utter confusion concerning release of the sources to
the customers, users, whatever; and charging for one's intellectual
property. These two subjects should NOT be linked! I still believe that even
Karl Marx ever foresaw the workers receiving an absolutely miniscule share
of the proceeds from the sale of the product.
 
Even though my profession (scientist) was started by medieval monks, I am
against poverty, chastity and obedience.

Bob Leif  

Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.
Email rleif@rleif.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Hyman Rosen [mailto:hyrosen@mail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 6:48 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

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.