Re: Linux... OK but definitely second best

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 09:07 AM 7/28/98 -0400, Steve Cohen wrote:
 
>Can you give an example of HOW the GPL has produced pernicious results?
>You keep saying that it does, and I haven't got enough experience to agree
>or disagree with you, so an actual example would help.

Well, the best example I've seen so far (and the one that has inspired me
to speak out on this issue) is an entrepreneur I know who (I hope!)
will soon release a truly revolutionary product. He was discouraged, because
he was afraid that he would get his product to market neither soon enough nor
withing budget and could not use GPL'ed source code to speed his
implementation.
I saved his butt, essentially, by alerting him to the fact that there was
some little-known code available under a Berkeley-style license that he could 
use. Still, he wasted about 2-3 months attempting to reimplement various
things 
from scratch.... Let's hope it doesn't kill his project. We shall see.

--Brett Glass