Picking a license

[Carl Banks]

On May 8, 7:58 pm, Paul Rubin <no.em... at nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Carl Banks <pavlovevide... at gmail.com> writes:
> > People who esteem their users give them freedom to use software
> > however they see fit, including combining it with proprietary
> > software.
>
> Huh????  That makes no sense at all.  Why should a standard like that be
> expected from free software developers, when it isn't expected from the
> makers of the proprietary software who you're proposing deserve to rake
> in big bucks from locking up other people's work that they didn't pay
> for?

Same thing's true commercial software, Sparky.

If a commercial developer has a EULA that prevents users from
combining their tools with tools from (say) their competitors, they
would be very much disrespecting their users.  The GPL does exactly
that, and people who release GPL software disrespect their users just
as much as a commercial entity that requires you not to use competing
products.

But for some reason when someone and inflicts the disrespect of the
GPL on the community they're considered folk heroes.  Bah.


> I've got no problem writing stuff for inclusion in proprietary products.
> But I do that as a professional, which means I expect to get paid for
> it.  And I think you have the "esteem" issue backwards.  Users who
> esteem developers who write and share software for community benefit,
> should not whine and pout that the largesse doesn't extend as far as
> inviting monopolistic corporations to lock it away from further sharing.

In your petty jealous zeal to prevent megacorporations from profiting
off free software, you prevent guys like me from doing useful,
community-focused things like writing extensions for commercial
software that uses GPL-licensed code.  The GPL drives a wedge between
commercial and free software, making it difficult for the two to
coexist.  That is far more detrimental to open source community than
the benefits of making a monopolistic corporation do a little extra
work to avoid having their codebase tainted by GPL.


Carl Banks