[Ilugc] We Don't Need the GPL Anymore
- From: ee01b098@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ayan Chakrabarti)
- Date: Sat Jul 2 18:00:54 2005
Hi,
So who'll pay the bills? Free Software has it's place. As does
open-source software. That doesn't mean proprietary software is bad (I
know this view is not shared by free software people). A
company invests in people, resources and time in a product for a reason.
It's only fair that they should enjoy its fruits. You should not forget
that they also create jobs & prosperity. Can you deny the fact that the
legitimacy created by companies like IBM, Red Hat & HP creates jobs for
linux hackers? You're essentially being paid to do the thing you love to
do. Yes, we all love free software. Don't you love the sexiest laptop
available too? Who will pay for that?
Well, I think the people at Cygnus and Red Hat get to buy nice laptops
too. Besides, Free Software is not about giving away software for free.
Its about giving away source, whenever you give away the executable, no
matter how much you charge for it.
I think the examples you quoted shows that free software can be
profitable. IBM, Red Hat & HP are paying linux hackers to write code that
are distributed under the terms of the GPL. Why ? Because, they need that
code now for their platforms. They realize that it'd be wasteful to
reinvent the wheel and that giving away the source of their improvements
is a small price to pay for the benefit of using an existing code base.
They benefit despite giving away their improvements, because they're
saving on time and money that they would need to invest to write an
operating system from scratch.
So the GPL helps the company in the sense that it no longer needs to
invest too much in people, resources and time. Companies (and activists)
who support removing the "viral" nature of the GPL want the companies to
have their cake and eat it too ie. benefit from lower investments because
of the presence of GPL'ed code, and yet profit as much as before.
--Ayan
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