Picking a license

[Carl Banks]

On May 8, 10:19 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 08 May 2010 16:39:33 -0700, Carl Banks wrote:
> > GPL is about fighting a holy war against commercial software.
>
> Much GPL software *is* commercial software. Given that you're so badly
> misinformed about the GPL that you think it can't be commercial, why
> should we pay any attention to your opinions about it?

In the interests of not allowing petty semantics to interfere with
this rational discussion, I will correct myself slightly although I
diagree with the terminology.  The GPL is a holy war against closed
source commercial software.  Anyone who GPL's their code is fighting
that war whether they intend to or not.

And losing it, I might add.  There are a small number--maybe 20--of
GPLed packages that have the leverage to force monopolistic
corporations to release their code when they wouldn't have otherwise.
Even then it's only bits and pieces (e.g., NVIDIA's kernel model--
fortunately the X Video driver is allowed to be closed source,
otherwise there'd be no driver on Linux).

Meanwhile there's thousands of GPL packages the corporations won't
touch and they--and we--suffer because of it.  I might like to buy a
commercial plugin for Blender, but there aren't any because it's GPL.
If good commercial plugins are available, maybe some firms would find
Blender a reasonable low-cost alternative to expensive products like
Maya, thus benefiting the whole community.  As it is, there is no
chance of that happening, all thanks to GPL.

That's the real effect of the GPL, the one that happens on the ground
every day.  But if you want to think that the GPL is furthering the
cause of open souce on account of a few companies who donated a few
lines of code to GCC, be my guest.

As for open-source "commercial" software, there's a different holy war
being waged against it, namely reality.  No one actually makes money
on it.  Open source is the bait to attract customers to buy other
services, ans that's what they make money on.  To me this means it's
not commercial but it doesn't matter: the GPL even interferes with
this.  Companies do make money supporting GPL, but it's in spite of
GPL and not because of it.  A permissive license would allow companies
more freedom to offer their proprietary enhancements.

Bottom line is, GPL hurts everyone: the companies and open source
community.  Unless you're one of a handful of projects with sufficient
leverage, or are indeed a petty jealous person fighting a holy war,
the GPL is a bad idea and everyone benefits from a more permissive
licence.

Carl Banks