From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) Subject: Re: Public domain software? Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1992 08:58:22 GMT
In article <1992Nov29.013114.16268@u.washington.edu> tzs@carson.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:
>If the small company makes its source code available, the large companies
>will be able to drive the small one out of business, because their good
>programmers are good enough to take the work of the small company's great
>programmers and put it in their software, and that will negate any
>competitive advantage of the small company.
Of course, you have conveniently neglected to mention that if the
small company releases its source under the GPL, and the large company
picks this up and incorporates it into its product, the large company
will then have to release all source to *its* product under the GPL.
(This is why some people call the GPL the General Public Virus -- it
infects all the software it touches...) And the small company will
then be free to take the source code from the large company's program
and incorporate it into its offering.
The real place the GPL falls down is from the perspective of the large
company -- it will have to re-invent its own version of the small
company's code to avoid being forced to release all its code under the
GPL. This effect is intentional, of course; the idea is that
companies will either have to release their code under the GPL, or be
handicapped by not being able to use other GPL'd inventions in their
works.
>for the user. The large companies would not benefit as much if they
>could use GPL'ed stuff, because they have lots of good programmers that
>they can use to reinvent wheels.
And this is why the virus-like nature of the GPL hasn't caused the
entire software industry to be infected by now. Companies
distributing proprietary software without source code have decided
that the benefits of using GPL code in their programs is not worth the
"cost" of having to adhere to the GPL.
>This is why if I write something useful, other than at work, I will either
>make it public domain or only put on a vanity copyright (e.g., my name has
>to stay on it). The public benefits both if my software is used by others
>in freely distributable software *AND* they benefit if a commercial software
>company is able to use my software to make a better product. The benefit
>the most of both of these things can happen.
Except if you leave off a copyright, or worse yet say "This is
copyright 1992 by Tim Smith; you can use this for whatever you want as
long as my name stays on it", it allows the code to be abused. A
commercial software company can take your code, put it into their
application, and only give you a footnote on page 1538 of their
manual. You don't get to see whatever modifications they made to your
code and whatever improvements they made, and neither does anybody
else. The GPL, while not perfect, at least ensures that the code and
its derivations will always be available under the same conditions as
--
Marc Unangst, N8VRH | "There are two ways to solve this problem:
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | the hard way, and the easy way. Let's start
| with the hard way."
| - W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture