New Essay - "FOSS Licences Wars"

[Shlomi Fish]

On Sunday 23 August 2009 16:14:28 Steve Litt wrote:
> 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:
>

I should note that the GPL (or any other permissive or copyleft licences) are 
not against commercial use as defined by the FSF. You can sell GPLed software 
and there are other ways to make money out of it. For example, Cygnus systems 
(now part of Red Hat) has been providing licensed versions of the GNU 
toolchain with support, so they sell it to you, and you pay them for support. 
See "Give Away the Recipe, Open a Restaurant":

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/ar01s09.html

Similarly, Red Hat are selling RHEL, or OpenNT -> Interix -> Microsoft's 
Services for UNIX has contained gcc, and other copyleft software. 

> 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!"

This can happen with GPLed software too as illustrated above. 

>
> 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.
>

And sometimes they can profit from GPLed software, too. I think you shouldn't 
restrict your software just because you hate Microsoft or Apple or whoever. As 
ESR says in http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html , a hacker should not 
spend a lot of energy hating Microsoft. He also once said he had no problems 
after Microsoft incorporated (BSD-style) code he wrote into their programs 
(while still crediting him in the about dialog). 

I dislike Apple, but I wouldn't mind them using my software, because my 
software is free-as-in-speech for everyone. The only way to prevent companies 
from making any use of your software is to add non-commercial, etc. clauses, 
but that will make it non-free and non-GPL-compatible.

I do agree that copyleft licences may prevent more "abuses" than permissive 
ones (either by individuals or by multi-milliard companies), but they have 
their own drawbacks as I demonstrated.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> Recession Relief Package
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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Freecell Solver - http://fc-solve.berlios.de/

God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we
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