New Essay - "FOSS Licences Wars"

[Steve Litt]

On Sunday 23 August 2009 05:43:55 you wrote:
> Hi Steve, and everybody!
>
> On Saturday 22 August 2009 21:54:35 Steve Litt wrote:

> > I think a lot of people (including me) like GPL's guarantee that they're
> > not doing unpaid work for Microsoft (or Apple). My experience with
> > VimOutliner, which is the only one of my free software projects that
> > actually attracted other developers, indicates that its GPL nature is
> > attractive to developers.
>
> I don't mind companies or individuals using my software commercially. In
> fact, I absolutely would be delighted in any beneficial use of it. I should
> also note that Microsoft, Apple or whoever are still free to use your GPLed
> software as long as they comply with the GPL, which allows them to sell it.
> For example, RHEL and commercial UNIXes contain a lot of GPLed and other
> FOSS code, and that's OK.

This is a very personal thing. A lot of people very much hate commercial use 
of their free software, for one of two reasons:

1) The programmer does all the work, and the company gets all the money. Many 
people, when confronted with this situation, look in the mirror and the mirror 
image says to them "sucker!"

2) The programmer hates Microsoft (or Apple or Google or whatever), and 
releasing permissive enables the hated company to profit off the programmer's 
work. In this case, going GPL is sort of like a boycott.

SteveT

Steve Litt
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