Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 17:56:24 +0200 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: GPL alternatives Message-ID: <19990520175624.G70539@bitbox.follo.net> In-Reply-To: <19990520093943.B240@whizkidtech.net>; from G. Adam Stanislav on Thu, May 20, 1999 at 09:39:43AM -0500 References: <4.2.0.37.19990519114402.00b37230@localhost> <4.2.0.37.19990519103533.00b3d380@localhost> <Pine.BSF.4.00.9905191327060.4442-100000@super-g.inch.com> <4.2.0.37.19990519114402.00b37230@localhost> <19990520001613.B69023@bitbox.follo.net> <3.0.6.32.19990519172425.009633f0@mail.bfm.org> <19990520003231.C69023@bitbox.follo.net> <19990520093943.B240@whizkidtech.net>
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On Thu, May 20, 1999 at 09:39:43AM -0500, G. Adam Stanislav wrote: > On Thu, May 20, 1999 at 12:32:31AM +0200, Eivind Eklund wrote: > > On Wed, May 19, 1999 at 05:24:25PM -0500, G. Adam Stanislav wrote: > > > At 00:16 20-05-1999 +0200, Eivind Eklund wrote: > > > >If you feel you need to protect the code from "exploitation", consider > > > >using the NPL (with the initial developer clause) instead of the GPL. > > > > > > What is NPL? Where is it available? > > > > The Netscape Pulic License. It is linked off www.mozilla.org, at > > least. (It is the license Mozilla is under). > > Hmmm... I just read it. I am not sure I would want to release my > code under it. The reason for using the NPL is that it leave a 'loophole' for the initial developer of the software to release the software (with contributed changes) under another license. This allows later evaluation of other license options that can give better benefit (e.g, the ability to let a commercial company create a product from the software in exchange for contributing specific changes or donating money to specific charities). > I think if we wanted to send letters to authors of gpled software, > the artistic license would be a much better alternative. It is also > the only free software license which allows to "make other > distribution arrangements with the Copyright Holder." That's because other licenses do not make a point of repeating copyright law ;-) > It also prohibits others from outright selling the package (while > reasonable copying fees are acceptable). That is one of the things I > dislike about GPL the most: It encourages others to make profit off > someone else's (possibly hard) work. I do not have a problem with people making profit off the work I release. The *point* of it is to make something that is useful to people. If people use my software in a business environment *at all*, they are making a profit somehow (or screwups in my software is destroying their time - I hope not...) If somebody can take my software and add percieved value to it, thus making a profit for themselves and give value to the "normal" users of the software - hey, they're making the world a better place. Money is only paid if you believe you get value for it - thus the users somehow percieve they get more value from getting the software off the people selling it than off the net. I also like profit going to people that are somehow involved in open source, even it is just as consumers of a sourcebase. This makes it much more likely that the money will channel back to open source development than if it just stayed with the ladder companies that bought the product based on open source. That last example is from my own experiences; we used to make FreeBSD based Internet connection boxes (similar to the Whistle InterJet). The ladder company mentioned above is one of those that bought the product; through the sale of the product, the changes that was done to make it possible was paid off. Those of the changes that were generally useful (and which didn't break other generally useful things which were not needed in our specific situation, and were not so dirty I was ashamed of being seen with them in public) has been contributed back to FreeBSD. An example of this is the PnP support in if_ed; another is the TTY emulation code for rbch in i4b, which allow a multilink PPP daemon to run over it (I'm going to release the mods I did to mpd as soon as I find the time to clean them up so they don't break other uses; I've been procastinating that for way too long...) As it is, (almost) everybody is happy: The customers got a product fitting their needs, we got a profit (or probably not - the product generated way more support load than anticipated, which is why it has been discontinued - but getting a profit was the intention), and FreeBSD got useful changes. Without the BSD license (which is what made us willing to risk working on kernel mods at all; the knowledge that we *could* keep it to ourselves if we needed to) the product would not have happened, and the customers would most likely have bought NT instead. This would not have resulted in *any* benefit, beyond a warm fuzzy feeling in somebody that 'nobody is making a profit off my hard work'. Eivind. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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