begin quoting Martin Franco as of Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 02:31:41PM -0700: > On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 02:54:14PM -0700, Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > > It's kind of ironic that the LGPL which RMS so despises may turn out to > > offer better freedom than the GPL since no businesses are interested in > > a dual-license model when someone could just fork the code anyhow. > > If the LGPL allows businesses to declare themselves supporters of free > software, yet not allow the community the freedom to fork the code, how > is this more freedom? How can a less free license result in more > freedom in any situation? I can see access to more source code, but > that isn't the same.
Having no options is not more freedom than having more options. The GPL discourages* businesses from producing software -- there's no good way to recoup costs. Third-party vendors can, will, and do undercut your training prices; printed manuals are passe, and people want electronic manuals instead; media will be duplicated, and shared in a heartbeat. Nothing wrong with programmers making a decent wage as programmers. The LGPL lets a company attempt to recoup development costs while marketing software to the open-source community. The GPL isn't nearly so friendly in that regard, which results in LESS choice for the end-user. And since having fewer alternatives is a reduction in freedom... any mechanism that increases the user's choices adds to their practical freedom. > I don't see how multi-licensing is relevent either. If you can obtain > the software under one license you like, like the GPL, then the other > licenses do not apply to you. If the company goes out of business or > changes the licensing terms, you still have the last free software > version to continue development if you want. And if you can't get the > software under a free license, then it is not free software. That's just expanding the potential user-base. Why should the BSD fans have to infect their systems with the GPL virus, just because the GPL weenies are a larger demographic? *Note that I'm not saying prohibit; but in general, the market is pretty damn small, especially outside of hardware vendors. -- I find the LGPL superior (in principle) to the GPL. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
