On Tue, 2009-06-23 at 15:45 -0700, Rick Altherr wrote: > > On Jun 23, 2009, at 3:05 PM, Zach Welch wrote: > > > On Tue, 2009-06-23 at 21:57 +0100, Spencer Oliver wrote: > > [snip] > >> GPL is important, but i do not understand people's objections to > >> adding an > >> exception - > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > >> who exactly is this hurting? > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > > > > Would you like to kick me in the nuts, while saying things like this? > > The effect would feel little different. > > > > Such exceptions hurt professional software developers that want to > > make > > a living developing free and open source software -- like me. I think > > they hurt the entire free and open source software movements, > > actually. > > > > From an economic standpoint, your contributions to an open source > project gain you no pay and cost you time. That cost is sunk. > Regardless of if a distribution is free (as in price) or for pay, you > have already invested time that you received no compensation for. The > claims that an license exception or commercial distribution will > impact your mortgage or ability to make a living is false. You just > seem to have a problem with someone else profiting from your free > contribution regardless of what they have done to justify their price.
Actually, I did not claim here that I myself am being hurt, merely that all of professional peers "like me" suffer from these exceptions because they provide a disincentive for the community to demand open solutions. But since you bring it up, sunk costs actually more relate to costs of abandoning work that should have been profitable, because conditions change that prevent the profit from being realized (or bigger profits becoming available through other means). Thus, my costs here will be sunk if and only if I chose to depart from the community (or am exiled). Since I did not mention my mortgage in this message, you are clearly reading all messages and extrapolating beyond the words that you have on the page in front of you. Please allow for the fact that language is not sufficiently precise to allow such extrapolations to be accurate. I _expect_ others to profit from my work -- under the terms of the GPL. The GPL has been established to have been the only and exclusive license of the OpenOCD project, because the exceptions were never written down! As you agreed, I have enough standing to take this as far as required in an attempt to enforce this interpretation, whether or not I win. Thus, my opinion needs to matter for that reason alone, because I am not simply treading water in legal waters: I think my boat floats. I have offered my services repeatedly to those who need it to help resolve this situation with technical solutions. Instead, I am being asked to give up my GPL copyright claims on the work that I have done, without any compensation. Are you kidding me? Under what obligation am I required to help others that project from violating the GPL license? Cheers, Zach _______________________________________________ Openocd-development mailing list Openocd-development@lists.berlios.de https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/openocd-development
