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

[Yigal Chripun]

On 27/03/2009 19:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>
> Interesting anecdote: Our company developed a Linux driver to one piece
> of hardware that our largest customer used. We did not release it under
> GPL terms but this is OK legally since the kernel doesn't require GPL'd
> drivers.
>
> The customer had a problem with one of the stock open source drivers in
> their OS. However, they couldn't get *any* support from the community
> because the community wouldn't even bother looking at a kernel that was
> "tainted" by a proprietary driver. So we were *forced* to relicense our
> driver under GPL terms (this customer has a lot of clout), just so the
> free software community would look at a problem completely unrelated to
> our driver. They probably never even looked at the source in our driver.

How is this different from Walter, Andrei and co. refusing to look at 
Tango?
Putting aside attitudes and ego, the community refused to look at the 
tainted kernel out of fear of potentially being sued for copy-right 
infringement and for the you have the draconian (and unconstitutional) 
US law to blame, not the FSF and its GPL.
>
> 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.