[cad-linux] Re: open vs closed
- From: Kim Lux <lux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: cad-linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 11 Feb 2004 14:03:44 -0700
On Wed, 2004-02-11 at 09:51, Thomas Schmidt wrote:
@Eric:
> You mentioned some very good points. Software should help you realize your
> ideas. And this would be much easier, if the used software could somehow
> communicate with each other. But I doubt that the GPL would enable such a
> communication. Communication capabilities must be implemented inside the
> software. This is not a licence issue. A free licencing model must not
> nessessarlily result in absolutly compatible software.
I agree a GPL license doesn't result in software communicating with
other software.
In the absence of open source software, the ONLY hope a user has of
getting software to communicate with other software is to get the vendor
to add the required communication routines. The vendor, when requested,
is going to survey the market to find out how many other customers want
the feature and make a decision based upon the financial merit. The
customer is, in effect, STUCK at the mercy of the vendor.
With open source software, the CUSTOMER has the power to implement the
new feature.
Licensing DOES play an important role in the feature addition, however.
If the software is GPL and the feature is, shall we say, non
threatening, the feature patch can be emailed to the code manager and it
will get added to the package. Others will get to use the feature if
they need it, it will get built with every subsequent build, people will
maintain it, etc.
Having an open source package without a GPL means that the vendor might
or might not accept the patch into the main line code. He'll probably
do some financial assessment of the situation and make a decision from
there. So, when version 2 rolls around, the user might have to
implement the patch again. Furthermore, other users won't get the
benefit of the patch.
Furthermore, the user patch may be usable in other pieces of software.
(Remember we are probably talking about a communication library,
hopefully between one or more open source packages.) However there is a
licensing issue: the user contributed the code, but who is going to own
the copyright ? Is the vendor going to let other users copy the code
from the package and use it in other (Open Source, GPL ?) packages ?
Probably not.
Having a package be open source is the first step. Having it be GPL is
the next step.
Lest anyone think I am fabricating things, we use a "source available"
package that recently underwent a version upgrade. We spent hundreds of
hours implementing improvements to V1 that the vendor DID NOT accept
into the code and now we are at a cross roads whether or not we are
going to stick with V1, merge our updates into V2 (not an easy task...)
or use a different package.
I'm wondering if some sort of lesser GPL couldn't solve the issue of the
vendor's profit motive and the user's need to customize and have some
control of the source code ?
Kim
> This needs somebody
> saying: "Hey, I write a new EFM module (or whatever). But let it integrate
> perfectly well into the top ten CAD systems.". This integration does not
> automatically happens then using the GPL. (You cannot embed a Gnome part into
> Konqurer, the Gnome Vfs is not at all compatible with KDE's IO Slaves...).
>
> "If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it"
> - Albert Einstein
--
Kim Lux <lux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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