Re: Not "Satanism;" realism.

[Steve Cohen <stevecoh@mcs.com>]

Brett Glass wrote:

> At 05:33 AM 1/2/99 -0600, Steve Cohen wrote:
>
> >You have made comments in other posts about Microsoft being able to
> >clean-room GPL'd code.  Under the BSD license, however, they wouldn't even
> >have to clean-room it, right?  So in this regard, why is BSD license
> >better?
>
> Because companies OTHER THAN Microsoft -- especially little guys without the
> money to undertake a "clean room" operation -- can also use the code and can
> compete with Microsoft on a level playing field. Microsoft's competitors are
> helped more than is Microsoft, and the development of competitive products
> are promoted. Thus, by releasing code under the BSD license, we can help
> restore the competitive marketplace we miss.
>
> If we use the GPL, we disadvantage the little guy who does not have the
> resources to "clean-room" or reimplement code, as Microsoft can.
>
> --Brett

Well, I can see your point, but it does seem a bit farfetched to me.  I can't
think of a single piece of currently GPL'ed code right now that Microsoft would
want to make the effort to make a clean-room copy of, since, in many cases these
are reinventions of things Microsoft and other commercial developers are already
selling or aren't interested in selling. For example, Microsoft could easily
have incorporated a shell with the capabilities of unix shells into DOS.
They've never been interested in doing so.

Of course that wouldn't apply to some new "killer app" that someone would
hypothetically invent now and put under the GPL.  My sense though, is that
corporations who are writing these kinds of apps now are not putting them under
the GPL.  With a few exceptions like Netscape (or Mozilla which still isn't GPL)
many of them remain closed-source.  Let's not confuse the stated intentions of
Richard Stallman with what is actually happening.