servies;537951 Wrote: > Or (and this happens more often than you would expect) they try to > obscure their use of it or try to fight the GPL... In the end they > fail... > > Indeed, I don't. > GPL is simple: if you want to take something from the community and > distribute the result, you have to give back to the community. That's > how you 'pay' the community. If you don't want to pay, then don't > take... > The problem with GPL is that it spreads like a virus, if you want to tightly integrate your already existing code with something released under GPL you will have to release the source for your code also under GPL even though it was originally released under some other license. This makes it hard or even impossible to use GPL stuff in some projects, LGPL is a bit better in this regard.
Also, if someone use GPL they just have to release their modifications to people that purchase your product, so there is no guarantee that it will go back to the community. The customers of the product are of course allowed to send it back to the community but they don't have to and the community can't get the source unless they purchase the product. I think many individual developers start to use GPL just because it's what they heard about even though they really don't know what it means. I know this was the case once when I started doing open source development. Many people also believe that using GPL will make sure no one else can earn money on your work, this really isn't the case. GPL just says that when you sell the software you will need to make the source code available to the customer (not the community). Using GPL can also make it problematic to use commercial libraries in your source that provides useful functionality. If I've understood this correctly I think this differs a bit depending on if you use GPLv2 or GPLv3. Look at Linux and DRM for example, GPL makes it really hard to mix them, at least it really scares the music/movie industry. I'm not a fan of DRM but I'd prefer to be able to play DRM protected material on my normal computer instead of having to have setup a separate Windows machine to be able to. For individual open source developers, releasing stuff under GPL makes some sense, for a company releasing stuff under GPL just creates a lot of problems. I think the individual developer are often worried that someone is going to "steal" his stuff, go closed source and earn money on it without returning their modifications to him. The company on the other hand wants to make sure anyone can help them improving the product without being restricted regarding what commercial stuff they can integrate with their product. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info) (Install my plugins through Extension Downloader) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library, Title Switcher and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.isaksson.info/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77579 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
