On 04/12/2011 12:24 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
"Russel Winder"<rus...@russel.org.uk> wrote in message
news:mailman.3416.1302591172.4748.digitalmar...@puremagic.com...
Personally I find licences such as BSD, MIT, ASL, etc. ones to avoid
since they allow organizations to take software, sell it for profit and
return absolutely nothing to the development community.
I've never seen that as a realistic concern. Here's the basic scenario:
1. I make program Foo and release it under BSD/MIT/etc.
2. The company EvilSoftwareCo takes Foo and sells it giving me nothing.
That's what's seen as the problem, right? I'm not concerned because the
obvious next steps are:
3. I go around spreading the fact that EvilSoftwareCo's Foo is available for
free (both meanings of the term) from my site.
4. There isn't a fucking thing EvilSoftwareCo can do about it.
"But what if EvilSoftwareCo makes proprietary changes to Foo and sells it as
FooPlus? Your Foo doesn't get any of those extras!"
Don't care. If they put in the time and effort to add value to something,
then they *should* be allowed to ask for compensation for their work under
whatever business model they choose. And if the value they've added is
merely trivial, then A. My version of Foo can still compete and B. I can
just add it to my Foo myself (or anyone else can).
That's true. And I'm all for EvilSoftwareCo to get money for *their* work;
rather than for theirs *and* yours ;-) (where 'you' may also be a whole
community -- that would not even have the opportunity to reuse EvilSoftwareCo's
advances)
Just like I'm all for music editors to get money for their work: edition, or
rather distribution. But in reality, they used to get a de facto tax on
listening to music (via copyright).
Denis
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