Andreas Kostyrka wrote: > On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 01:57:25AM -0700, Robert Kern wrote: > >>And for thoroughness, allow me to add "even if they have no intention or >>desire to profit monetarily." I can't explain exactly why this is the >>case, but it seems to be true in the overwhelming majority of cases. >>Academic projects with non-commercial clauses languish in obscurity >>while academic Open Source projects thrive. The contributors to the Open > > Well, it's easily explained. (Well at least my motivation in this case) > I do not touch things that I cannot use "generally" and being a > "commercial" IT consultant this basically means: > *) opensource is better than commercial payware. > (because "for free" (as in beer) is usable in more contexts) > *) GPL is acceptable for much stuff, because I can install GPL'ed > stuff for a customer. > *) GPL is not acceptable for "library" stuff, because as a software > developer I'm sometimes forced to do "closed" stuff. > (Yep, even nowadays there are place where it's basically a legal > requirement.) > > Implications: > > *) qt is a bordercase: GPL for free, or commercial for pay. Not perfect but > good enough. > *) A number of O-R mappers for Python are of no relevance to me, > because they are GPL. O-R mappers are development libraries. > But this would only be a restriction if the code were to be redistributed, of course. It's stil perfectly legal to use it internaly without making the modified source available.
> The idea is that I'm mostly not interested in learning tools that are > not of general use. > > So basically, stuff not meeting this criteria, is only interesting if > it's unique: > > *) commercial stuff is only interesting if there is no competing > open-source project. > *) GPL'ed "building blocks" are only interesting when there is no > competing LGPL version. Example: OCR on Linux/Unix. There are no > perfect solutions there so a GPL'ed solution might be > ok. (Especially because one can use OCR without linking with a lib > *grin*) > > Andreas regards Steve -- Steve Holden +1 703 861 4237 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
