The Industry choice

[Bulba!]

On 06 Jan 2005 15:38:53 -0800, Paul Rubin
<http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:

>> Making derived work proprietary in no way implies that the base
>> work is publicly unavailable anymore.

>Since you want to be able to incorporate GPL code in your proprietary
>products,

Nope. That is not what I'm arguing. Really, I think you have
jumped to conclusion about that: I merely pointed out that
I don't like what I perceive as end effect of what GPL license
writers are attempting to achieve: vendor lock-in. 

I think I stated that clearly.

> and say there's no problem since the base work is still
>available from the same places it was available from before, fairness
>would say you shouldn't mind that people incorporate code from your
>products into THEIR products, since your version is still available
>from you.

I merely pointed out that previous poster's argument about
"hijacking" the OSS product: that it's just not possible
as long as this person is not in legal position to make _base_
work proprietary.

I think I stated clearly: base work is still available regardless
of whatever derived work creators do or don't do - esp. that
they tend to release only binaries, thus making it impossible
to create further derived works! 

>From the viewpoint of looking at availability of source code A, 
it's completely irrelevant if those guys are fishmongers or 
make derived work A' and redistribute only binary of A'. Not 
a single line of publicly available source code appeared or
disappeared as the result of whatever they do. Amounts of
binaries - yes, that is affected. But not the source code.

>Really, you're just a freeloader looking for handouts.

Rest assured this is not my motivation, esp. that I 
attempt not to use the GPL-ed software whenever
I reasonably can (e.g. it's rather hard to abstain from
using gcc sometimes, as you oft have a hard time
compiling this damn thing with anything else -- see,
the beginnings of vendor lock-in appear). And I thought 
I stated clearly that basically I have no problem with 
LGPL - which requires distributing modifications 
of the _base_ work, but not _your_ code. 

Oh, and "freeloading" argument really doesn't make much
sense: since that software is available to EVERYONE,
its availability / unavailability in the economic sense it 
is merely reducing / increasing costs equally for everyone
(ceteris paribus, assuming both vendor A and B find
that OSS product equally useful). I like to think of
OSS as a "tide that rises all boats".



--
It's a man's life in a Python Programming Association.