[OT] Python like lanugages [was Re: After C++, what with Python?]

[Tim Harig]

On 2011-01-18, Rui Maciel <rui.maciel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tim Harig wrote:
>
>> You still don't see many
>> companies doing large scale internal development using Python and you
>> definately don't see any doing external developement using a language
>> that gives the customers full access to the source code.
>
> What you refered as "full access to the source code" only goes as far as 
> the license which was imposed by the copyright holders lets it to go.  If 
> you distribute the source code along with the binaries but you only 
> license your code if the licencees accept that they may look at the source 
> code but they can't touch it then distributing the source code is 
> essentially meaningless.  There is a good reason why "open source 
> software" is not the same thing as "free software".

That argument is not going to fly with where commericial interests are
concerned. The simple fact is that there is legality and then there is
reality.

People follow licenses like they follow
the speed limit: only when they think they might get caught and punished.
When people break the licenses, the only recourse is litigation; which
is expensive.  Even finding and proving license violations is difficult
where source is availible.  It is therefore in the corporate interest
to make breaking licenses as difficult, uneconomical, and tracible as
possible; and that is exactly what companies do.  Even companies that
don't really have any trade secrets to protect are protective about
their source keeping it locked out of public view.  Access to the source
generally means signing an NDA so that if the source is somehow leaked,
they know the most likely candidates for the origin [so as not to pun with
"source"] of the leak.

Whether or not you actually agree with that economic reality is
irrelevant.  Those who fund commerical projects do; and, any developement
tool which violates the security of the source is going to find itself
climbing an uphill battle in trying to gain market penetration with
commericial software producers.