On Sat, May 19, 2007, Shachar Shemesh wrote about "Re: GPL Issue": >... > While TrollTech and MySQL both make their income from > selling proprietary licenses to GPL code in something which is > borderline extortion, >...
While I agree with you philosphically (all software should be free, etc.), to be fair, there's a different way to look at what TrollTech, MySQL, and others, are doing. You can think of these software as "commercial software, which you can freely use yourself or use in free software projects". In essence, all GPL software is like that - you can only use it freely if you use it yourself (don't distribute it) or use it in free software projects. The phrase "commercial software, which you can freely use yourself or use in free software projects" might sound sinister, but it is actually much better than traditional commercial software. Here are the two most important differences (as I see them) 1. "try before you buy": For many companies (especially start-ups) up-front costs can be prohibitive. If you're trying to develop a database application, then using a commercial database requires you to buy a number of licenses in advance (for the developers, demos, and so on), which can easily eat up a lot of your seed investment). On the other hand, when using dual-licensed free/commercial database like MySQL, all your developers, demos, and so on, can use the free version, and only when the development is successfully finished, and you (and your investors) are satisfied with the results, you can go on to actually buy the software. Basically, MySQL, Qt, and similar GPL+commercial software are telling you: "Don't pay us now, when you're a start-up struggling to get on your feet - pay us later, only when you're successful and are selling your product". Sounds fair to me... 2. "allowing, and even encouraging free software": With normal commercial software, it's hard to use it to create free software. Not impossible, though: In the old days, GNU was written over commercial Unix, and today there are some Windows-specific free software. But still, requiring that your users buy some commercial software before they can use your free software usually limits its usefulness. MySQL, QT, and so on, allow and even encourage free software to be written on top of them, which is great for the free-software world. -- Nadav Har'El | Sunday, May 20 2007, 3 Sivan 5767 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Unlike Microsoft, a restaurant would not http://nadav.harel.org.il |charge me for food with a bug! ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
