[OT] open-source license issues

Nick Sabalausky a at a.a
Tue Apr 12 03:24:37 PDT 2011


"Russel Winder" <russel at russel.org.uk> wrote in message 
news:mailman.3416.1302591172.4748.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>
>Personally I find licences such as BSD, MIT, ASL, etc. ones to avoid
>since they allow organizations to take software, sell it for profit and
>return absolutely nothing to the development community.

I've never seen that as a realistic concern. Here's the basic scenario:

1. I make program Foo and release it under BSD/MIT/etc.

2. The company EvilSoftwareCo takes Foo and sells it giving me nothing.

That's what's seen as the problem, right? I'm not concerned because the 
obvious next steps are:

3. I go around spreading the fact that EvilSoftwareCo's Foo is available for 
free (both meanings of the term) from my site.

4. There isn't a fucking thing EvilSoftwareCo can do about it.

"But what if EvilSoftwareCo makes proprietary changes to Foo and sells it as 
FooPlus? Your Foo doesn't get any of those extras!"

Don't care. If they put in the time and effort to add value to something, 
then they *should* be allowed to ask for compensation for their work under 
whatever business model they choose. And if the value they've added is 
merely trivial, then A. My version of Foo can still compete and B. I can 
just add it to my Foo myself (or anyone else can).




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