On Mon, 7 May 2007 13:45:28 +0530, Raj Mathur said:
> This is an important point, and I'd like to clear this misconception
> about the GPL:
> On Monday 07 May 2007 12:37, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> [snip] The original statement did not make this distinction. Had you
>> said that the authors not being helped by the GPL are closed source
>> folks, I would agree. I, personally, see no reason why my work
>> should facilitate closed source people exploiting the end users
>> -- and thus see no negatives of this aspect of the GPL. If people
>> want to make money -- more power to them. They just can;t use _my_
>> work to make money for _them_.
> Further correction: I can use your GPL'd software to make money, as
> can anyone else. I do make money out of it, as a matter of fact. The
> GPL doesn't prevent or even deprecate making money out of software
> anywhere. The only thing it prevents is making software closed and
> THEN making money out of it.
> We're not in -ism-land yet.
Indeed. Sorry about posting on issues like this post-midnight,
when the brain was not fully engaged.
The missing steps in my illogic are:
While the GPL allows you to make money off my work, to _really_ make
a killing you need to throttle the supply -- by, say, keeping your
enhancements to yourself. This is not allowed under the copyleft
licenses -- but is permitted by, say, the BSD license.
So, my objection is to the throttling of the supply side, by keeping
the enhancements from the community. With the GPL, if the demand
goes high enough, others can come in to supply to same service, or
people can help themselves -- since the supply of the enhancement
code is not stifed.
On a personal level, I find hoarding ideas somewhat, umm,
repugnant, and artificially stifling supply to raise prices has been,
in other circumstances, called black marketeering.
manoj
--
That life is long which answers life's great end. -- Young
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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