On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 06:52:45PM +1200, cr wrote: > On Wednesday 20 August 2003 07:14, Bijan Soleymani wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 06:27:03PM +0100, iain d broadfoot wrote: > > > * Bijan Soleymani (bijan@psq.com) wrote: > > > > On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 08:43:21AM +0100, Mark wrote: > > > > > On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 09:33:03PM -0400, Bijan Soleymani wrote: > > > > > > This makes a lot of sense. I mean if the FSF hired you to write a > > > > > > GPL program, they wouldn't want you to release a proprietary > > > > > > version of it after you quit working for them. > > > > > > > > > > Why would they care? They would have their GPLed version, if you > > > > > choose to write a closed version, that's your choice. > > > > > > > > If they didn't care about closed version they wouldn't use the GPL. > > > > > > This is broken logic. > > > > > > The FSF would have nothing to lose from a closed version of a GPL piece > > > of software being developed. > > > > It's not nothing. Let's say half the users use the FSF/GPL version and > > half use the closed version. The FSF has just lost half its users. By > > the FSF's theory half the users have lost their freedom. > > No, they've chosen (for some presumably good reason) to use the 'closed' > version. They still have the freedom to choose. > > The most you can say is, by using non-'free', they're helping (financially) > the 'closed' version and reducing the user base of the 'free' version. That > doesn't matter much so long as the versions remain compatible. > If it's M$ doing the 'closed' version, of course, we know what would happen - > copyrighted non-free 'features' get added, after which they try to squeeze > the free version out. OTOH, if it's a company with the slightest degree of > ethics, then the two versions could offer a wider choice to users. I don't know really. I think Microsoft is representative of the proprietary software industry. Maybe some companies are better than others, but it simply makes sense that a company would "try to squeeze the free version out". Companies are out to make money, if their business is proprietary software, a compatible Free Software version of the program is not very good for business. Bijan
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