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Original post by Oxyacetylene
I mean, yeah I'm sure people working at Microsoft, are interested in more than money, and like most of us with an interest in working in software development, will do things for purely altruistic reasons, because they love the field they work in. I'd still say the company as a whole, as an entity really only cares about money, like any big company.
Pointless distinction, since companies are abstract things that can not be attributed feelings or desires. When you say something like "Company A only cares about money," what you are really saying is that "Company A's
corporate culture is one that only cares about money." By pointing out that it was company policy in Company A to work around defects in the products of Companies B, C, D, E and F so as not to inconvenience the consumer, I undermine your point. You could argue that failure to engage in the above workaround by Company A would have adversely affected its sales and bottom line, but I could retort that Company A could have engaged in a publicity war at less effort and simply told consumers that the products of Companies B through E were defective. It could worked around the defect
and publicized the fact - painting itself as a martyr and Companies B through E as incompetent. That it did otherwise is proof that the values of Company A might be Slightly More Complex™ than you have given them credit for.
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Original post by Anonymous Poster 1
You can whine all you want, but how would YOU design a license that would allow you to use a certain amount of code without permission, but otherwise work like the GPL - and at the same time not make it overly complex and ambigious?
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0, which even comes with a "human readable" (as opposed to legalspeak)
summary.
Gee, that was easier than you thought, wasn't it?
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Original post by Anonymous Poster 2
Bull. First of all, that future is only in your dreams. On the remote chance that you are prescient: Corporations are unlikely to just give up their source code. If they do, it would require some kind of government intervention. Such as declaring all previous software public domain, and by force take the source from those unwilling to reveal it.
(This is fast becoming one of my most frequent responses around here; I wonder why:) You're not very smart, are you?
The whole point of that pie-in-the-sky excerpt is for such a system to serve as an alternative to the current mess that is software patents. The original purpose of patents - including the fact that the implementation details were made
public - was to spur innovation by providing protected profit opportunity
and by seeding the community of would-be innovators with the specifics of the previous "generation." This system has that effect, while eliminating shameful profiteering (tactics such as purchasing the rights to an innovation and then retroactively suing for "infringements").
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I have the solution to your problem with the GPL, though: With the same means (presumably legislation) the other software was declared public domain, declare GPL software public domain also! Simple as that! DOABLE with the GPL.
You don't see that the problem with the GPL is its viral nature, the fact that no derivative can be closed, even for a short while, which eliminates competitive protection. If all the implementation details to your innovative system are made public
the very moment you release it due to legal constraints, how do you protect yourself from competitors - including hippie-types who would offer identical software,
your software, at zero cost?
The problem of the GPL is that it doesn't play well with others. That's not acceptable in the frequently mish-mash environments of corporate software development. This extends to public software development, such as the fact that a piece of non-classified code written by the government (ie, public property since its paid for with taxes) licensed under the GPL can not effectively be employed by any citizen engaged in competitive enterprise in which the software is anything more than "frosting on the widgets." That's unacceptable.
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Original post by Anonymous Poster 3
I don't have a problem with the BSD license if that's what you think. I just have a problem with people whining that all open source should be licensed under the BSD license. My point is, and has been all along, that people have the right to release *their code* under whatever license they want to, under applicable laws.
You've inverted the issue. BSD is held up as a case of a commercial-friendly license, but nobody (generally speaking) is advocating that all open source be released under it. Rather, the majority opinion here is that the GPL, purported proponent of Freedom and Liberty, actually prevents the use of much software in a genuinely productive way. Considering the fact that open source software is virtually all reimplementation of proprietary solutions (because the bazaar does not lend itself to good design or innovation without a clear model - or contrast), the GPL condemns successive generations of derivative works also to be mere reimplementations of smart ideas developed elsewhere, which is the real tragedy.
Code licensed under proprietary-friendly licenses has been employed in larger solutions that have been of real benefit and genuine innovations, yet such code has not lacked for contributions or enhancements. Such code is truly Free, and has thrived, while GPL'd code has required monumental ideological effort to motivate: think of all the "rockstar" personalities associated with major GPL projects, of all the essays and white papers written and speeches given, then contrast with the virtual silence of the BSD community. It would almost seem that the one gets things done, but only after much furor while the other just Gets Things Done™.
I'll understand if ideology prevents you from conceding any of my points.
