The Industry choice

[Paul Rubin]

aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes:
> >I don't like what I perceive as end effect of what GPL license
> >writers are attempting to achieve: vendor lock-in. 

> And my counter-argument is that I believe your perception is wrong.  If
> I agreed with your focus on lock-in, I'd say that what the GPL is trying
> to lock in is a specific legal philosophy by subverting the existing
> system.

Bulba's perception is wrong in a different way too.  The GPL tries to
encourage the enlargement of a public resource, namely a codebase
shareable by a worldwide community of users and developers, a cyber
equivalent of a public park whose facilities anyone can visit and use
but nobody can take away and exclude others from using.  The idea of
referring to such a shared community resource as a "vendor" is just
bizarre.