Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 21:50:56 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: Trevor Johnson <trevor@jpj.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stallman now claims authorship of Linux Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20010418213837.00bcb100@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20010418151230.P27000@lpt.ens.fr> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010418064119.04710720@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20010418003011.045ef3b0@localhost> <20010418032018.S12981-100000@blues.jpj.net> <4.3.2.7.2.20010418064119.04710720@localhost>
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At 07:12 AM 4/18/2001, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: >That is *not* the point. Cygnus (now under Red Hat) has made plenty >of money with custom modifications to GPL software. Not true. Cygnus was only marginally profitable until it began to sell packaged software, much of it licensed under licenses other than the GPL (e.g. the eCOS license, which does not contain the GPL's "poison pill"). As former Cygnus employee Bill Barr recently wrote on a public mailing list: >The support model is marginally profitable, but far from lucrative. When I >worked at Cygnus Solutions, the company had experienced some really tough >years in the past and was trying to transition to a product model. It's >much harder to sell support than it is to sell a box. Moreover, the >overwhelming majority of revenues came from semi-conductor manufacturers >and embedded systems shops, not the desktop/server software development >community. Overall, trying to sell support for free software tools to >software developers was pretty much a complete bust. In short, the myth that Cygnus was highly successful is just that: a myth. >If I want a >custom version of gnucash to suit the needs of my company, I can hire >Brett to make the modifications for me, and Brett can insist on being >paid lavishly for his work, especially since I'm asking him to touch >this disgusting GPL code. If I were to abandon ethics and do this, it is doubtful that I would be paid lavishly. What's more, if the code were absolutely brilliant stuff that could be licensed for large amounts of money or made the company lots of money, I would see none of it. I'd be on the endless consulting treadmill instead of being fairly rewarded for my work. Why any programmer would actually advocate being put on a treadmill (maybe more like a hamster wheel!) is beyond me. >I think it's obscene that M$ can get away with charging $400 >per seat or whatever it is for their bloatware. The GPL hurts Microsoft's potential competitors far more than it does Microsoft. Microsoft, which is now rich, can afford to throw hundreds of programmers at a project to reimplement everything from scratch. But small competitors need to concentrate on the innovative parts of their code and re-use existing code for the more mundane functions that no one should have to program again! The GPL prevents them from doing this and thus cripples their development process. If you want to see competition for Microsoft, oppose the GPL. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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