Picking a license

[Patrick Maupin]

On May 14, 9:17 pm, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l... at geek-
central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
> In message
> <e5a031a3-d097-4a63-b87a-7ddfb9e90... at n15g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>, Patrick
>
> Maupin wrote:
> > After all, lots of software ideas proved their worth in proprietary
> > systems, and then were later cloned by FOSS developers.
>
> And vice versa. Everybody, whether working in closed or open environments,
> builds on the work of everybody else. Rsync pioneered the idea of doing
> transfers of incremental changes to a large file across a network without
> being able to have the two versions of the file on the same machine to do a
> direct side-by-side comparison; Microsoft copied the idea in more recent
> versions of its server software. Andrew Tridgell could easily have patented
> his idea, but he chose not to.
>
> Apple pioneered the idea of using 3D graphics hardware to do window
> compositing on the desktop; the Compiz folks went on to figure out how to do
> this efficiently. Microsoft also copied the idea, but forgot the
> “efficiently” part.
>
> Free Software also benefits from networking effects that are not available
> to proprietary developers. The resources available to proprietary developers
> are proportional to the size of the company they work for; typically they do
> not share software with competitors. Whereas the Free Software community is
> like one huge company in this regard, available to freely pass ideas and
> code back and forth. This has led to the creation of ideas that proprietary
> companies simply cannot match.

Well said.

Pat