Re: Does the LGPL encourage sharing of code?

Tony Lambregts wrote:
> Brett Glass wrote:
> >The purpose of the GPL is to kill commercial software -- and, hence,
> >commerce. And, hence, the software economy.
> The purpose of the GPL is to kill "propritory software" not commercial
> software. Now you may think that the Two are equivilant but you are
> mistaken.

They may not be equivalent, but I'm not sure you can make a compelling
case that they are not linked.

> The software Industry will be fine in that most people are
> not programmers and an easy to use and well supported software package
> is what *most* people need. If the only people that you know are
> programmers then maybe you won't understand this. But  for most of the
> people *I* know linux and wine are just too hard. (even setting up
> windows is a difficult task for some of them). They are not morons, they
> are well educated in there field of endevor,  It's same situation when
> it comes to Income tax, anyone can do their own taxes but H&R block and
> a number of software packages make a lot of money every year at tax
> time.  If a company like H&R block can make money. I don't see why
> Lindows or RedHat can't. The situations are as close to equivilant as I
> have seen.

Actually, in the longer term, it's the people you mention who will be
worse off, as shrink-wrapped products is the area that that is most
vulnerable.  It is quite possible that BeOS might have been able to eek
out a living if it weren't for linux.  I don't see GPL killing M$ or
Intuit.  But I don't see it being helpful in the goal of making all
software BETTER either.

-r