Eric S. Raymond on GPL and BSD licenses. & Microsoft coming to Linux

[Yigal Chripun]

On 28/03/2009 19:46, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Yigal Chripun"<yigal100 at gmail.com>  wrote in message
> news:gql5ou$2te1$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> On 27/03/2009 19:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>> This is the kind of mentality I think that completely goes against
>>> progress, and it's fostered by the GPL. I'm not saying the GPL is
>>> useless, but I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it
>>> unless they are forced to. And there's this holier-than-thou attitude
>>> from GPL supporters that completely sucks.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I agree that the world could do just as good without GPL. Maybe
>>> it was necessary in the beginning, but not any more.
>>>
>>> -Steve
>> Both proprietary and free software have a place in the world since they
>> serve different purposes.
>> for instance, I wouldn't want military software to be available online
>> with the risk of being exploited by terrorists but on the other hand I
>> wouldn't want to use any non reasonably free COTS software. When you buy a
>> car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to
>> software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any warranty
>> if you mess with the internals of its product, but they shouldn't prevent
>> you access to those internals.
>>
>> "I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it [the GPL]"
>> how do you explain Red-Hat's success? there are many many companies that
>> gain a lot by using GPL and they are certainly not forced to use it.
>>
>> I agree with you that there are zealots with that holier-than-thou
>> attitude and that this really sucks. by saying - "I agree that the world
>> could do just as good without GPL. Maybe it was necessary in the
>> beginning, but not any more. " you just joined the group of zealots.
>>
>> As I already said, in reality, both proprietary and free software are
>> useful since they fulfill different requirements. saying otherwise is
>> stupid and wrong.
>
> I think you've misunderstood him. Maybe I'm the one who's mistaken, but I
> interpreted what he said as being "BSD/zlib/etc>  GPL" rather than
> "proprietary is better than free/open/whatever-you-wanna-call-it".
>

I'm not sure you're correct - in Steve's example the company used a 
closed source license and was "forced" to switch to GPL. those two 
approaches are obviously incompatible and I doubt very much that the 
closed source firm would prefer BSD over GPL over their previous closed 
source license.

But even if you're right my argument still stands.
BSD/zlib/whatever doesn't protect those basic freedoms that the current 
draconian laws try to remove and that some business models rely upon.

to continue my example, Red Hat doesn't just provide the source code for 
its software out of good will alone, its business model relies on the 
fact that that source code and all its derivatives is open source and 
will remain so. there are many successful companies that use and rely on 
free (as in GPL) software.
BSD does not provide this guaranty - for instance, MS didn't implement 
the network stack for windows from scratch, instead, they used the BSD 
code for that. they also closed it and all the changes they did to that 
code. For a company like Red Hat this is unacceptable - that means if 
Red Hat used the BSD license, MS could simply take their code, modify it 
and close it, putting Red Hat out of business.

How many companies do you know that use the BSD for their products?
BSD is used by universities and non-profit organizations not companies.
claiming that BSD > GPL in a corporate environment is simply wrong.