Re: Does the LGPL encourage sharing of code?

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Long, boring message follows.

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Roger Fujii wrote:

 >
 >The last I heard of watcom was that they were trying to opensource 
their product -
 >so the GCC definitely had impact on them.  See http://www.openwatcom.org
 >

Cool.  Thanks for the link; I've wondered what happened to them.  I
purchased their compiler years ago, back when they had the best DOS
extender.  I loved that little compiler...  That's where I learned C.

 >
 >not sure about that - you have to have a pretty good rationale to 
contradict
 >fundamental rules like supply/demand, law of diminishing return....  I 
have
 >yet to see an _economic_ arguement in favor of *GPL that has anything 
other than
 >wishful thinking behind it.
 >

My "rationale" is nothing more than this: The worth of a product *to an
economy* is not the price for which it can be sold, but the amount of
value it contributes.  Nothing more, nothing less.  As for supply and
demand, I know that a vast supply of GPLd code is going to make it hard
to become a millionaire writing software.  Big deal.  It's hard to
become a millionaire, period, and programmers should stop expecting it.

Consider: before Henry Ford inroduced assembly line manufacturing to the
auto industry, very few people could afford a car.  After, a very large
portion of the population could afford one.  Would you claim the
economic impact of the auto went down, or up?  After all, the profit
margin went down on the vehicle, and very few people could get rich off
of it.  But it *did* supply work for more people, though the pay wasn't
great.  And it created a support industry that is valued greater than
the auto industry itself.

Same thing with the printing press.  Just because a book doesn't cost as
much as it did before the printing press doesn't mean the value of the
book went down.  The real worth of a book isn't the paper and ink, but
the words the ink forms.  And the greater the distribution of a work,
the more its intrinsic value.

Here's a simple test: given the same cost, which is worth more, a copy
of the new Jackie Collins novel, or a book of the BSD api?  (I know it
depends on who you are.  I'm talking about the average person on this 
list.)  I'd wager that the *value* of the book bears little relationship 
to the cost.

The amount of value software contributes to society is not the amount of
money it can extract from that society, but the amount of value it
provides *in total* for everyone who uses it.  Just like a spanner
provides no value until it is used, software provides no value until it
is used.  And the more often it is used, the more value it adds to society.

Supply and demand, and the law of diminishing returns, has nothing to do
with the ultimate value of an item. They only have to do with the amount
of money you can charge for an item, and that isn't what I'm talking about.

And: economics isn't the only reason to do something.  Why should there
be an economic argument for the GPL, when the GPL isn't about economics?

 >
 >The dotbomb was an anomoly.  Stuff like this does happen, but the 
point is that
 >it is not sustainable, as reality sets in.  As for economics being 
flawed, that's
 >a given, as people are irrational.  I also dispute that stocks are a 
commodity -
 >IBM is worth more than Enron :-).  In the same light, I think the *GPL 
is eventually
 >going to fail, as it does not honor intellectual property - an idea 
that's been
 >around for quite a long while.
 >

Heh.  Good point, wrt Enron.  But how long did it take before we
realized Enron was nothing but smoke and mirrors?  And how many other
companies are out there doing the same thing?  Enron just happened to
get caught.  How many people try to get rich "playing the stock market,"
instead of investing in companies?

As far as the GPL not honoring intellectual property... whose
intellectual property does it not honor?  Seems to me the people who 
wish to take GPLd code and turn it into a proprietary product are not
honoring intellectual property.  The GPL does *not* steal code.  It
merely requires reciprocation.  If you don't want your code to be
available to everyone, don't use GPLd code.  There's no big stick here.

If a software company offers a license to its code, and someone takes
that code and makes their own proprietary software product, isn't it
right for the software company to get upset?  Isn't that what
"intellectual property" is all about?  Isn't it about respecting the
wishes of the author?  So what's wrong with expecting people to respect
the GPL licensing agreement: Never include my code in a closed product?
  Why is it all right for a company to do this, but not an individual?

Also: although the idea of intellectual property has been around a long
time, it hasn't been around long in its current form, as practiced by
corporations world-wide, and written down in law in the United States.
  This is something new, and it favors corporations over individuals
(DMCA in the states, and the proposed EU copyright agreements in Europe).

 >>The primary goal of GCC is portability; and by that criteria, it succeeds
 >>wonderfully.  I use GCC because I know my source will be able to 
compile on many different
 >>platforms.
 >>
 >
 >So, why doesn't your argument work for NetBSD.  I see no difference - 
using your
 >criteria, NetBSD is superior.
 >

That's not *my* criteria: it's GCCs.  To judge a work, you must first
understand what the work intends to do.  Someone made a value judgement
that GCC was crappy, simply because it didn't create code as efficiently
as custom compilers.  I merely pointed out that GCC intends primarily to
be portable.  Since that is also an important aspect of a compiler, I
argued that effiency isn't everything.

And *yes*, NetBSD is superior to Linux.  Not because of its portability,
either; Linux is turning out to be very portable, almost without even
trying.  There was a time when Linus said it would never run on anything
but x86.  No, NetBSD's superiority comes from better, more-modular code.

I still use Linux; the Linux kernel is more fun to hack on.  And that's
all I'm about; having fun doing geeky things.

 >>I've not seen too many people interested in the C++ end of the compiler.
 >>And that is a drawback of free software, both copyleft and BSD/X11;
 >>people work in their areas of interest.
 >>
 >
 >It is less true of GPL than it is for X11.  Significant contributions have
 >been made to X11.  But this argument has already been made wrt wine, but
 >fell on deaf ears.
 >

Yeah; the X11 project is incredible.  There are people working on some
of the most boring code I've seen.  It's important and vital code, but
kinda boring, at least for me.  And I will admit it is due in part to
the license.

I don't claim the GPL is better than the X11 or BSD license; it has
different goals.  Brett claims those goals are to destroy the software
industry; I claim those goals are to keep grass-roots code out of
proprietary software.  Basically, if you only want your code to be used,
the X11 or BSD or even public domain are better choices.  (Why use the
BSD or X11 licenses in the first place?  Why not just place it in public
domain?)  If you are an anti-corporate louse like me, choose the GPL.

The only flaw I see with the GPL is that it sucks up code from other
free licenses, and doesn't give any code back.  Some coders dual-license
their code, but that's not the same thing.  Me, I'm currently debating
whether my sense of fairness outweighs my great dislike of corporations.
  Since I doubt any of my code will ever end up in a corporate product,
I'm tending to the X11 license.

 >>Agreed, 100% and wholeheartedly.  I think the GCC approach is flawed in
 >>that respect.  (And many others.  I don't claim it's a great compiler.
 >>I only claim it has achieved the goal of portability.)
 >>
 >
 >I agree it is portable.  But I thought the original point was that it 
is lacking.
 >

The original claim was that it displaced better compilers because of its
license.  I claim it displaced more efficient compilers because it is
portable.  Really, that's all I was driving at.


                     - Tony