Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: > On 8/4/06, Joost van der Sluis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> This difference is exactly what the gpl makes the gpl. If I have >> developed some code, and give it away for free and some company makes >> some improvements and start earning money with it. At the same time they >> could refuse to give me their improvements, so that I'm stuck. They >> didn't help me to improve my code.. but they can go with my work and >> make their profit... >> >> That's the difference between BSD and the (L)GPL. > > I see your point. I think of it as how each camp can have leverage > over the other. > > GPL software needs some type of leverage over commercial software as > they don't have the financial backing (or whatever else). They do > this by forcing everybody else to publish there changes, which helps > the project along. > > Commercial companies feel they need some leverage over GPL software, > as they invested a lot of money and man-power into some project to try > and create a better product the end of the day. They want some return > on investment. If they had to publish all change, nobody would bother > buying their product, as they could just use the GPL (free) one. > > I guess this is what makes the choice of a license so hard! :-)
I don't think that it's that hard assuming you want to release sources :) - commercial libraries get a dual license: gpl and proprietary (you can develop non gpl software if you pay). This works, see e.g. Qt, MySQL etc. - community projects are GPL or LGPL depending if they are libraries or programs - code developed by public funds (academic etc.) gets BSD _______________________________________________ fpc-devel maillist - [email protected] http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
