Re: Why only one non-free section?
This should probably be in gnu.misc.discuss or somesuch...
Sven <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> writes:
> like said, the true problem is not on selling CDs, but on using the
> product in their own product, without giving some of the benefits
> back to the people who made it.
If you GPL it this becomes much harder, since I could then buy a copy
of the derived product and put it on my web site for free.
> this is ok for people who code the thing as part of their hobby, and
> don't need to live from it, but that coudl mean in the future most
> of the software will be written, by people doing IS management, and
> then writting freeware between two reboots of NT servers.
Out of interest, where do you think all the current GPL and BSD
software has come from? RMS seems to be doing well enough off free
software to take a holiday in NZ. A lot of people in the Debian
project devote all their "spare time" to free software in the form of
Debian GNU/Linux. Red Hat employs people to work on Linux and
associated programs and libraries, such as Gtk.
Maybe the software will be written in all the spare time the techs
have now that everyone has Linux instead of Win95/NT, and they don't
have to babysit the servers to keep them up during the day.
> and then most universities make money from deals with big companies
> to use their software designs, what will happen to that if they just
> release everything to GPL, ? I just read somewhere that they are
> less CS graduates every year, this will not help i in that.
If the University manages to get the developer to sign over the rights
(e.g. "Do it or you don't graduate") then they could sell the product
to a big company without the GPL licensing restrictions, to do with as
they wish. OTOH, the GPL version could be worked on by other people
(who can refuse to change the copyright on their code, or assign it to
the FSF which is much the same thing) and turn into something great,
like GIMP.
Haven't UCB and MIT historically released their code under *less*
restrictive licenses than the GPL?
> will the free software movement be the death of computing like we
> know it today ?
If computing today is MS (and IBM, etc.) I certainly hope so.
--
Carey Evans http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/c.evans/
"So, do you steal weapons from the Army often?"
"Well, we don't get cable, so we have to make our own fun."
Reply to: