[Ilugc] We Don't Need the GPL Anymore
- From: joe_steeve@xxxxxxx (Joe Steeve)
- Date: Sat Jul 2 20:30:16 2005
On Sat, 2005-07-02 at 17:48, Vamsee Kanakala wrote:
Well., I think the Free Software movement would not have survived this
long had it not been for the copy-left.
I beg to differ. I think the main reason why it survived is because
people love to share and show off their work. It's also because when you
use somebody else's work, if you improve on it, you feel like giving it
back. Saying "hey, thank you, I learnt something, but this is better".
Well., thats the reason why the Free Software has been expanding. The
GPL is the reason why it has still stayed together. But for the GPL.,
most of the hard work of the Free Software community would have been
used in proprietary code and hence the effort of `Free`ing the community
would have gone waste.
Of course, there are some people who like to steal & hoard. But copycats
never go too far. If a company has to steal code to compete in the
market place, I have serious doubts about its future.
Well., this is generally called `code-reuse`. And., it is not a dirty
thing. What is dirty is using `community work` for personal benefit.
When you take something from the community you ought to give back to the
community. That is exactly what the GPL enforces. In an Ideal world.,
there wont be any grudges in doing this., because everyone would be glad
to share their software. But this is not an Ideal world., so there need
to be rules. That is exactly what the GPL enforces.
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).
Most companies develop software for use in some other company. These
software are of no use to the community as such., as they are
specialized to some company. Though it would be `ideal` to give this
software out as Free Software, the FS community does not demand it. When
company `A` develops software for company `B`., then if the software is
under a restrictive license., only the employees of company `B` would
suffer. So., when A sells software to B., it should consider the moral
values and give the sources of the software to B under a non-restrictive
license. The company A need not release the source on the Internet. The
spirit of Software Freedom should be shared between the consumer and the
provider. When the consumer is general public in large., obviously you
need to publish the software on the Internet as it is the only easily
accessible means.
Now., this kind of software (the one developed by A for B) is what is
driving the software Industry. There are players such as Microsoft,
Adobe, Sun who write the latter kind of software (where the consumers
are the general public). These companies wont fall on the ground and
crash because they have given their software out as Free Software. They
still will survive (pretty well) because of the support requirement in
the market. Morover, they'll be able to make more money because many of
the bugfixes and software testing would be done by the public who have
free access to the source code.
The business model using Free Software is different and may not return
good rewards in _some_ cases. But what matters is ethics in business.
--
.o. A proud GNU user
..o
ooo
http://www.joesteeve.org/
PS: This is insecure email. If you have problems please
ask for a secure confirmation.
Other related posts: