Re: GPL version 4

["Eric Furman" <ericfurman@fastmail.net>]

Could you guys please remove misc@openbsd.org from the cc
of this mail? Nobody here cares.

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:47:46 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<davids@webmaster.com> said:
> > Would you grant me the freedom to give away your commercial
> > product for free
> > or to incorporate it in my commercial product? Probably not. You'd instead
> > grant me less freedom. The GPL protects me from this.
> 
> Except it doesn't. With or without the GPL, if he still makes his
> commercial
> product, you will still be unable to give it away or incorporate it in
> your
> commercial product. If he doesn't make it, that's just less choice for
> everyone.
> 
> It may be a poorer product. It may cost him more to develop it. It may
> wind
> up not existing. But in no case will will you wind up with the freedom to
> give away his commercial product. So the GPL actually won't protect you
> from
> this at all.
> 
> It will just result in him producing a poorer, more expensive, less
> compatible product -- or none at all. Either way, everyone else will have
> fewer (and/or poorer) choices. Everyone loses. Nobody wins.
> 
> Note that had he been able to incorporate the GPL code in his commercial
> product, he may have passed bug fixes and improvements back to the GPL
> project. He would not have had to, of course, but if his product just
> uses a
> GPL component or library (that doesn't compete with the larger product),
> there's no reason for him not to. Everybody could have won.
> 
> It's always possible he may instead elect to make a GPL'd project. This
> may
> allow him to produce a higher-quality product in less time. It may allow
> others to build on his work, and result in more freedom for everyone. He
> may
> make less money, but maybe not. The question of whether the "everybody
> loses" or the "lots of people, maybe everybody, wins" case is more common
> is
> an empiric one.
> 
> I have seen an awful lot of "everybody loses" cases. I've seen very few
> "everybody wins" cases.
> 
> DS
>