RE: Tax writeoff for Open Source Developers?

[Matthew Benjamin <MBenjamin@comshare.com>]

Brett,

If--as I do indeed believe--there are skilled developers who feel threatened
as much by the GPL as by Microsoft, why not just bite the bullet and join
with them to develop the kinds of software libraries needed to write the
value-added products you want to sell?  

If BSD-style licenses are a better deal for OSS developers, then your own
reasoning suggests developers will gravitate to them.

I think you and your friends are unseemly in your special pleading for
victimhood.  If you are a victim of the GPL or Richard Stallman, you are so
of your own free will.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Glass [mailto:brett@lariat.org]
Sent: Sunday, December 20, 1998 9:49 PM
To: Sujal Shah
Cc: Multiple recipients of list AM-INFO
Subject: Re: Tax writeoff for Open Source Developers?


At 03:13 PM 12/20/98 -0500, Sujal Shah wrote:

>Could you point out where he said that? 

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html

>Additionally, I don't believe that favoring the tax break means that
>monetary reward is a motivation.

Then why offer a tax break? 

On the other hand, perhaps "free" software which businesses cannot 
reuse due to the GPL ought to be taxed, to remediate the harm it
does to innovation and programmers' livelihoods.

--Brett