"Martin P. Hellwig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Those who can not afford the software are excluded for that end
> product even though they may have worked on the source where 99,99% of
> the restricted licensed software is based on.
Well, they chose to make it available to others for reuse. But
software "unavailable to those who can't afford it" is better than "no
software at all"
> However I make a poor defender for the GPL because, as you can read in
> my previous posts, I don't really believe in it.
The question is wether or not it believes in you :-)
I believe in GPL'ed software - I use it regularly. On the other hand,
I don't believe that it represents the best license to release
software if the goal is to improve the lot of humanity. The
restrictions are on "distribution", not on use, so it doesn't really
keep people from using said software commercially. For instance, one
or more of your examples may have been worth developing for internal
use. They then decided there was a profit to be made in distributing
it commercially, and proceeded to do so because they could. Without
the profit motive, they may not have done the extra work involved in
preparing the IP for distribution and doing the distribution.
Personally, I release stuff under a BSD-like license, historically
having included requirements that I be notified of bug fixes, and/or
that I be given copies of commercial software that included my code. I
eventually gave up on them as unenforceable.
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
