Re: What about an OS monopoly under GNU license?

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 12:02 PM 3/29/98 -0500, Carl Beaudry wrote:

>Not at all.  Nobody pays me to breathe, but I *do* earn a
>reasonably nice living from modifying and adapting GNU
>software. 

In short, you are willing to make your living as a consultant
rather than by selling commercial software. You may be happy 
in your niche, but many people would like to have the chance to 
write commercial products and compete with folks like Microsoft! 
And we need them to.

>It's *you* who are reprogramming he
>English language by using only an ideologically sliced-up
>definition of "business."  

Nope; it's you who are casting the term so broadly that it
is rendered meaningless.

>> [Stallman's] intent, with the license, is to prevent
>> the development of conventional commerical software that includes
>> freely distributed code.
>
>True, but only because the "conventions" are antithetical to
>human cooperation 

Nonsense. I have led many teams of developers in the creation of
commercial software, and you can bet that they were cooperative.

>> This hurts businesses and hurts innovation.
>
>There you go again, equivocating "business" with software
>ransom.

Your use of the word "ransom" above is an excellent example of 
the extremism inherent in Richard Stallman's philosophy. (If
anything, it's the GPL that holds software for "ransom" by
requiring innovators to give away the fruits of their labor
if they use the code.) By contrast, the Berkeley license
permits broad re-use of the code.

>As I have shown, it is not only possible, but
>lucrative to earn a living creating software without holding

>it hostage.

The use of the word "hostage" above is, again, both extreme
and misleading. Also see more above.

>Microsoft is *always* going to have more programmer time to
>devote to a task, not that it's helped their code quality
>though.  And because of the open source requirements of the
>GPL, the little guy can *read* the GPL'd code and create a
>commercial workalike if he so chooses unlike  the proprietized
>alternatives.

Not so. This would be a "derivative work," and hence would also
be covered by the GPL.

>Where you are correct is that, if the resulting software is not
>any better than the GNU version, the developer is wasting his
>time trying to hold his own software hostage.

Again, the extreme nature of your language betrays the extremism
inherent in your viewpoint. Protecting one's work via copyright 
is no more "holding it hostage" than my owning a car is "holding 
it hostage" (Karl Marx to the contrary, of course).

This extreme viewpoint actually leads the Free Software 
Foundation to advocate copyright infringement. As it says on
its own Web pages:

"If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping 
and murder, you might prefer not to use the word 'piracy' to 
describe it. Neutral terms such as 'prohibited copying' or
'illegal copying' are available for use instead. Some of us might 
even prefer to use a positive term such as 'sharing information 
with your neighbor.'" [Note: I'm not making this up; this is truly 
what it says. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.]

This is why so many commercial software companies are unwilling 
to create versions of their software for Linux -- and why the

ones that do are mostly companies that distribute their software
for free -- such as Netscape.

The Free Software Foundation, and Mr. Stallman, feel free to
accept and reject different portions of the Constitution at
will. In particular, they reject the notion of intellectual 
property wholesale. The Constitutional provision which 
authorizes Congress to grant authors and inventors, for a 
limited time, the exclusive right to their work has proved
to be the greatest incentive to creativity in the history
of Mankind. Stallman & Co. are, in this regard, no better
than those who believe that the limits on the duration of
intellectual property rights should be abolished, eliminating
the "public domain."

>People will pay for software & support because their
>business depends upon it, not because they are
>philanthropists.  It works for me every single day.

Well, then, aren't you "holding them for ransom?" How could
you POSSIBLY consider this to be ethical? ;-)

>surely you recognize that the Linux market is much larger than the
>FreeBSD market and that Linux runs on more platforms.

Actually, the *BSDs run on far more platforms than Linux and
are, in general, considered to be more stable. Linux happens 
to have a larger installed base right now, but this is merely
due to lack of publicity for BSD as an alternative. Knowledgeable
managers use FreeBSD rather than Linux when stability is important.

>how is
>it then that the GPL impeded Linux' development relative to the
>Berkeley-licensed FreeBSD?

Again, you seem to be intentionally missing the point. The GPL
hinders the creation of commercial products which use portions
of GPLed code.

>Secondly, why must software be held for ransom in order to be
>paid for?  You are accepting the received propaganda without
>proof.

You're raving.

--Brett Glass