Re: Not "Satanism;" realism.

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 09:57 PM 1/1/99 -0600, Steve Cohen wrote:
 
>You are correct.  My age is showing.  When I first messed around with this sort
>of thing there was no GPL and we called what we were doing, "putting it in the
>public domain".  Now there is a GPL which prevents others from getting rich off
>our inventions, for good or for ill.

With all due respect, this is still not QUITE correct. First of all, a 
company such as Red Hat *can* get rich off of your GPLed software and not pay 
you a cent.

Secondly, someone who wants to create a commercial product using your code
can't get rich just by reselling it, because your code is already available 
for free. Who'd pay for a product that did just exactly what a free product 
did, and was of exactly the same quality?

In order to make money, the person who uses your code must add a 
substantial amount of unique value of his own. Any profit he
realizes will be due to the value that he adds ABOVE AND BEYOND what
users can get for free. This means that he deserves it; the money is
coming not from your code but from his improvements. It is true that
you've facilitated his success by saving him the trouble of staring
from scratch. But what you've saved him is busy-work: the needless
reimplementation of what you've already done and given away for free.

We should all be for that. Why tie people up in reimplementing the wheel?
It benefits nobody, and may prevent new products from seeing the light
of day.

Under the GPL, any person with value to add must either forego
any financial reward for his work (which isn't fair) or engage in mindless 
reimplementation of what you've already done. It doesn't make sense to 
hobble him or her in this way, unless you're just mean or spiteful. Or 
want Microsoft to crush him while he struggles to bring his product to 
market.

--Brett