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

[Lars Kotthoff <lists@example.com>]

> This is a contradiction. However, let me be more precise here: you are
> demanding payment for certain uses of your work. Specifically, should I
> chose to modify your program and distribute it to others, I must give
> you (and others) certain fruits of my labour that I would not have to
> give you if I wrote code that did not interact with your software in
> this way.

Ah, I thought you meant "profit" as in "money". Yes, I certainly do want
something for my work.

> I derive and distribute a work from yours, I may pay twice: once through
> taxes to pay you to create the work in the first place, and potentially
> once again in lost revenue when I have to give away my additional work
> for free. ("Free" as in "gratis," not freedom.)

...opposed to you giving it away for a fee and everybody else (well everybody
who buys it anyway) paying twice.

> (I note you didn't respond to my point about the
> GPL being, to the original author, more "business-friendly" in terms of
> restricting potential competition than licenses that grant more broader
> rights.)

Makes sense to me, but I'm not a business :)

> If the research was funded by taxes, I fail to see how someone who paid
> those taxes isn't funding that research.

My point is really that *everyone* funds it and no entity in particular.

> > If the additional research is the larger part, there's a chance that the
> > corporation would have to rewrite the original software (interface issues
> > etc). I agree with you though that in this case a BSD-like license would
> > make more sense. But again, you don't know that when you're releasing the
> > software.
> 
> Again, often you do. Do you think it wasn't obvious that the readline
> library would under most circumstances be a very small part of any
> program using it?

Good point. But it wasn't an academic project. I would argue that when you're
doing research, you're less likely to have an idea what the impact will be.

> Well, how much would it cost to independently develop an entire OS? Add
> in an appropriate factor for the risk (since nobody's going to give you
> the money to develop that OS for free), divide that by the number of
> units, and there you go.

According to [1], just the kernel would be about $130,000,000. But nobody would
develop an operating system from scratch if no free one was available, they
would simply license Windows at a lower cost.

Lars