Re: [tlug] Yes! Another argument about the GPL! You knew you wanted it....

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2009-08-12 18:18 +0100 (Wed), Lars Kotthoff wrote:

> And if it was GPL'ed they wouldn't have to pay for your modifications.

Even more so, quite possibly they *couldn't* pay for my modifications,
even if they wanted to and would derive economic benefit from doing so.
As Stephen points out (on 2009-08-12 21:12 +0900):

) And the assumption that "the derivatives" are available *at all*, let
) alone "freely" so, is completely unjustified.

Here are some samples of ways that readline being GPL'd may have or has
caused suffering for users of software:

1. The user of a non-GPL'd piece of software would like to have readline,
but doesn't because it can't be freely used. He loses the functionality.

2. The user of a non-GPL'd piece of software has readline functionality
becuase the company wrote a similar library. But now the user either has
to pay more for the software (becuase the rewrite cost time and money),
or pays the same price but does without some other features that he also
wanted.

3. The open source community loses the efforts of one or more developers
for a time becuase they're busy rewriting readline so that the free
software community can have the functionality in non-GPL'd programs. The
community suffers because the developer would have been working on new
free software rather than rewriting existing "free" software.

Item number three there is an actual case: editline is a clear example
of efforts being pulled from new software that would have been freely
available to the community.

This is Stephen's point, I think; when it wasn't clear to most of the
world that making software freely available could be economically
profitable, the GPL helped a bit. At this point, everybody who's going
to be convinced is already convinced, the GPL will not change the
holdouts, and we're at the stage where consumer suffering due to the GPL
is substantially larger than the benefits they're deriving.

> You could argue that way, but I'm thinking about the research that
> could be based on it and made proprietary. Reserving commercial
> exploitation is certainly another point, but that's not what I had in
> mind.

That may not be what you had in mind, but what's what you're doing,
regardless. Basically, you're looking at good effects that might come
out of using the GPL on a piece of software, and ignoring the bad
effects that may also happen.

Keep in mind, too, it's impossible to sell a piece of software and
make the research embedded in it completely proprietary, except by
patenting it (in which case it matters little whether the source is
available or not). If a commercial entity does some original research
and demonstrates its application to the world, the world still sees a
net benefit from knowing a previously unknown idea, even if they don't
have an implementation of it they can run. For example:

> [R is] an example for innovation happening without commercial
> interest though.

It's also an example of innovation building on research done by a
commercial entity. It's quite possible that had Bell not designed S and
demonstrated an implementation, R would never have existed.

> ...but are you saying that in general a piece of research, if
> exploited by a company, benefits the general public? For example a
> specific algorithm in Mathematica?

Yup. Just knowing that something can be done is a benefit. In the case
of a specific algorithm in Mathematica, we're likely to know far more,
even having a description of how it works, because the users are not
likely to trust it otherwise.

> My point is that everybody's taxes are paying for the research and if one
> company uses it, they are benefiting from that.

Perhaps this is the key problem; you think of it as the company
benefiting, and stop there. But if the company is successful doing what
they do, and it's not due to their lobbyists getting the government
to give them a legislated monopoly or whatever, then that means that
consumers have decided that they're happier if they give that company
their money and receive the product in exchange than if they don't. That
means that the consumers are the real ones benefiting here; the company
also benefiting is just a side effect.


> > Note that the commercial software firm doesn't care much about
> > "stuff", it cares about money.  I'm reducing profs and grad students
> > to that level, that's all.  And the amount of "stuff" that gets
> > published in useful form is actually rather small.
> 
> If you're looking at it that way, having universities do research to
> start with is a terrible waste. Surely the commercial exploitation
> and benefit to society would be much higher if the same was done by
> commercial entities.

Not at all. Universities and companies tend to do different and
complementary types of research.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
           Functional programming in all senses of the word:
                   http://www.starling-software.com