Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 22:54:29 -0600 (MDT) From: "Justin T. Gibbs" <gibbs@narnia.plutotech.com> To: jak@cetlink.net (John Kelly) Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: commercial software (definitive) Message-ID: <199805160454.WAA24796@narnia.plutotech.com> In-Reply-To: <199805160119.UAA15070@dyson.iquest.net> <355dec23.77822475@mail.cetlink.net>
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In article <355dec23.77822475@mail.cetlink.net> you wrote: > On Fri, 15 May 1998 20:19:07 -0500 (EST), "John S. Dyson" > <toor@dyson.iquest.net> wrote: > >>> The limitations appear to be imaginary. Red Hat and Caldera don't >>> seem to have trouble selling products which include GPLed code. >>> >>They aren't inventing very much. > > For that matter, neither is Walnut Creek. Walnut Creek, Red Hat, etc. are distributers. They make their money off of packaging which isn't affected by the license issue. It's people like NCI, Whistle, Pluto, Juniper, etc. that are greatly affected by the license on the code. >>The limitations have to do with the redistribution encumberances >>placed upon inventions derived associated with GPLed works (among >>others.) > > I like an "encumbrance" which prohibits others from hiding the source > code of derivative works. The truth of the matter is, the hiding rarely happens. Take Pluto as an example. There is no doubt in my mind that we simply would not have been able to get our product to market as quickly as we did if we did not go the embedded UNIX route. What made it possible to go this way? Licensing terms that didn't scare our lawyers off, low cost, and a robust system. Because Pluto is using FreeBSD, the FreeBSD community gets two paid, full time professionals working on things like CAM, paid contracts to FreeBSD developers for things like CVSup enhancements and work on GigE/Hippi networking, and lots of code dumped back into the community. The code we are "hiding" you wouldn't want to touch anyway and most of it is userland code that would not be subject to licensing restrictions anyway. We could hide things like CAM, but what is the incentive? By releasing the code into the community, we get far greater test coverage than we could internally and increase the pool of developers that can maintain the code. You don't need to force business to share. There are plenty of examples in the commercial portion of the FreeBSD gallery that prove this. > Conventional business has little future in today's fast moving world. Basing your product on something "free" is not very conventional. >>It is their problem, and doesn't bother me. > > Is it really a problem, or a solution? A solution to what problem? Pluto would have gone with an RTOS if the licensing terms didn't work out, so in my opinion, you either get what the corparate users decide to contribute back, or you get nothing at all. -- Justin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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