Jón Fairbairn wrote:
Stefan Monnier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
I can't entirely dismiss GNU/FSF/GPL but it poses a fundamental
conflict with the only way I can see of earning a living so it's
like a continuous background problem which drains some of my energy
and enthusiasm hence the length of my rambling post where I made
another attempt to understand my relation to it.
Maybe you should thank the FSF for making you doubt: you should
really think very hard about how you're going to make a living off
of selling a program, even if that program hasn't been anywhere near
any GPL'd code. In all likelihood it'll be much easier to earn your
money by selling services around your program than just the program
itself.
To add to that from the point of view of a potential user:
if there some programme that I'm going to rely on and its
source is not free, I'll look elsewhere rather than rely on
a single vendor that might disappear without a trace and
leave me with no support.
Conversely, if it has free source, but doesn't quite do what
I'm relying on it to do, I'll happily pay someone to sort it
out for me (assuming that I can't/don't want to/am to busy
to do it myself and that I have any money).
I know of several good ideas that started out as attempts at
commercial projects but weren't taken up. The best that
happened to them is that someone recoded the idea (or it was
re-released) as free software. If that didn't happen, they
disappeared without trace. Remember, keeping the code secret
is no protection against someone rewriting the whole thing
from scratch. If it's a big enough idea, you can be sure
that some large commercial concern (and conceivably teams of
amateurs) will do that unless you've patented something
crucial... and keeping patents alive is an expensive
business -- especially if there's a large concern on your
case ("we want to use your patented idea. Oh, it looks like
your code uses one of our patented ideas; you'll be hearing
from our lawyers").
Thanks Jón and Stefan for these points.
I'm coming round to the idea that possibly a combination of BSD (for libs)
and a metamorphosing licence for the program (from proprietary up to a
certain date then GPL thereafter) would solve these problems by removing
incentives for anyone else to try and reverse engineer code before I'd had
time to get an established user base, while keeping users happy (6 months is
not that long to wait to get full control), and preventing anyone else
getting a similar advantage after the 6 months had elapsed (if they used any
of the non-BSD parts of the app (now available to them under GPL) they'd
have to release their version as GPL).
After the 6 months had elapsed, other companies could develop the code
further, but they wouldn't be able to impose a similar metamorphosing
license because the code they used (apart from the BSD components of course)
would be covered by GPL.
However *I* would still have the right to modify my code and repeat the
metamorphic process because I wouldn't be bound by the metamorphic GPL
license I sold to others (please correct me if I've got this wrong), so
people could choose to pay a modest sum to me for the improved version,
(which I'd have had a head start of the last 6 months to develop) or wait 6
months to get it from some other company, or spend several months hacking
themselves starting from the original version...
It gets even better because as long as I make sure that I only use BSD libs
+ my own code, I could always choose to release future versions with a
proprietary license therefore the amortized consequence of the previous
metamorphic GPL releases would be risk-free (those versions now being so far
behind that they would be irrelevant) yet any other companies which had made
improvements (as long as they were based on a version they received + all
their own code (or BSD code)) could be a useful source of ideas (to
reimplement) or collaboration.
Anyway no doubt this is all getting a bit off topic but it's interesting
that the different concepts provided by BSD and GPL can suggest possible
models like the above.
Regards, Brian.
--
Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose.
Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past,
congealed in the present in unthought forms,
strive mightily unseen to destroy us.
http://www.metamilk.com
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