Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 02:25:49 -0700 (PDT) From: <unknown@riverstyx.net> To: John Baldwin <jobaldwi@vt.edu> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What's wrong with GPL? (was Re: Jordan the Confused) Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9904160213480.1108-100000@hades.riverstyx.net> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.990416051051.jobaldwi@vt.edu>
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I'm not saying that GPL is suited for everything. Obviously, it's not. Tax software comes to mind immediately... wouldn't be much point in compiling all that data and writing code to handle each year's taxation if anyone could come in and capitalize on your efforts any time the liked. However, for some purposes GPL is perfect. It seems to work great for operating system development... And your driver analogy is flawed. I'm pretty sure that driver's have already proven to be separate programs. So if you port a driver to your own personal OS, then you have to release your new driver code, but you shouldn't have to release your OS source. I'm positive that there are Linux drivers that don't have available source code. I use a closed source X server for my i870 card for example. --- tani hosokawa river styx internet On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, John Baldwin wrote: > > On 16-Apr-99 unknown@riverstyx.net wrote: > > But in regards to the GPL, it seems like a fairly innocuous kinda thing. > > I write some software, declare it to be GPL'd, and thus guaranteeing that > > the source code shall remain available. It doesn't really limit me all > > that much. And if I write a new version, I can opt to not release it > > under the GPL, freeing me from its burdens should I decide that I want to > > go commercial with it. > > Actually, (someone correct me if I'm wrong), but if you release version 1.0 > under GPL, and use any of the 1.0 code in version 2.0 that you try to sell w/o > the source, then anyone can sue you for the source code to version 2.0 because > it would be a derivative of 1.0 and by the GPL that means the source to 2.0 > would have to be GPL'd and thus freely available, which prevents you from > selling it, for all intents and purposes. It gets much worse when you have a > large propietary product, such as your own OS specific to your application, > and you want to add drivers for a newer network card. You wouldn't be able to > use GPL'd code because you would screw yourself. You'd have to release the > source code to your propietary OS, which your competitors would gladly take > from you and sink you. OTOH, such a company can safely use BSL'd code without > worrying about having to release the source to their competitors. And let's > face it, not all software is going to be free, we do have to eat somehow. So > we can't kill all possibility of selling software. > > > --- > > tani hosokawa > > river styx internet > > --- > > John Baldwin <jobaldwi@vt.edu> -- http://members.freedomnet.com/~jbaldwin/ > PGP Key: http://members.freedomnet.com/~jbaldwin/pgpkey.asc > "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.freebsd.org > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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