On 2/12/2009 12:44 PM, Sundance wrote:
Giovanni Bajo wrote:
You're basically restating your previous point, without debating mine.
The language choice affects companies much more than £350 /
programmer.
Hi Giovanni, hi Phil, hi everybody,
Giovanni, I'm... a bit uncomfortable writing this because I generally
agree with you, and don't want to come across as confrontational, but I
think there is still something worth pointing out that I feel you left
out from your reasoning.
In my (limited) experience, a major parameter in language choice in
medium- to large-size companies is developer availability. Languages for
which developers are easier to find get a significant advantage (hence
the commercial success of PHP, for instance).
From this, it follows that fostering a broad ecosystem of developers
does help your language in the end, so those small-scales developers for
whom £350 is a big deal do actually matter to you, indirectly. Actually,
I think it goes even more so for those developers that only start
dabbling for whom the option of eventually relicensing their product and
selling it might make a difference.
So, no LGPL for PyQt might mean less small-scale developers picking up
Python for their Qt development, which in turn means less Python
developers out there as a whole and a lesser chance for bigger companies
to eventually settle for Python as their chosen tech.
Or something to that extent anyway. Hard to tell how much weight that
reasoning actually carries in practice. Not too much, I hope (but I dare
not be optimistic).
Sill, that's why I, for one, *hope* PyQt will eventually end up LGPL in
a commercially sustainable manner (the best option being sponsorship
from Nokia... one can dream!). But that's only a hope, one I barely dare
voice at that, and is no way a demand. :)
Sundance,
I hear your voice loud and clear. I understand your point. I myself
would like very much a LGPL version of PyQt, but I just feel that what
you are describing is a really small fraction of non-customers which
simply won't have an incentive to become... non-customers but simply
free users of PyQt -- on the other hand, a LGPL of PyQt would surely
means existing customers and potential customers that stop being so for
Riverbank.
In other words, there is no winning balance here; and if a choice is to
be made, I wouldn't base it on that fraction of small non-customer
developers which would just contribute to create a slightly larger
ecosystem of developers.
Anyway, I'm just expressing my (commercial) opinions on the matter, but
it is Phil that knows better his customers and what would happen with a
license switch.
As for myself, I would strongly prefer a change in the development
workflow to make it more open (as discussed in a previous mail of mine)
rather than a change in license. I believe this would contribute it more
to safer and widely adopted library than the license change itself.
--
Giovanni Bajo
Develer S.r.l.
http://www.develer.com
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