wxPython Licence vs GPL

[Martin P. Hellwig]

Mike Meyer wrote:
<cut>
> 
> Well, they chose to make it available to others for reuse. But
> software "unavailable to those who can't afford it" is better than "no
> software at all"

That I do not agree with, I think it depends on which your side of the 
fence you are.

For instance I have a specific problem, there are currently 2 product 
available that come close to solving it, one costs $24,999 and the other 
is above that. That is about $23,999 above what I can afford to solve my 
problem, so I have the option to leave the problem as it is or try to 
tackle it myself.

Stubborn that I am, I am currently creating my own solution, knowing 
well that other solutions exist and I can only make a poor copy of those 
already existing effort

> 
>> However I make a poor defender for the GPL because, as you can read in
>> my previous posts, I don't really believe in it.
> 
> The question is wether or not it believes in you :-)
> 
> I believe in GPL'ed software - I use it regularly. On the other hand,
> I don't believe that it represents the best license to release
> software if the goal is to improve the lot of humanity. The
> restrictions are on "distribution", not on use, so it doesn't really
> keep people from using said software commercially. For instance, one
> or more of your examples may have been worth developing for internal
> use. They then decided there was a profit to be made in distributing
> it commercially, and proceeded to do so because they could. Without
> the profit motive, they may not have done the extra work involved in
> preparing the IP for distribution and doing the distribution.

Yeah well, GPL works reasonable well but perhaps not for what it was 
intended.

> 
> Personally, I release stuff under a BSD-like license, historically
> having included requirements that I be notified of bug fixes, and/or
> that I be given copies of commercial software that included my code. I
> eventually gave up on them as unenforceable.

Thats the trouble with restrictions, how do you enforce them, with 
license I don't found it worth the hazzle. BSD/MIT style license is a 
good substitute of no license at all.

-- 
mph