Re: Economics and the GPL

On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, Tony Lambregts wrote:

> There is a word for this. After a seeing numerous different variations 
> of this statement coming from you. I have come to the conclustion that 
> this is your theme song and all you really want to do is spread Fear 
> Uncertainty and Doubt. In short this is FUD.

If you're going to close your mind to the truth, labelling it as something 
to be ignored is a perfect way to ignore it without letting it bother you.

Look, if discussing the possibilities of what an all-GPL world might look 
like inspires Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in you, maybe you should take 
this discussion a little more seriously.  In me, the possibilities only 
inspire concern for the future, that's all.  (At least for now.)

I'm not convinced that an all-GPL world would be a bad thing.  I'd love to 
believe it would match Stallman's utopian vision.  However, I'm too much of 
a realist to be blindly optimistic like that.  I have to at least consider 
the dangers, in case they should materialize.

Anyone who sees only the most optimistic possibilities in the future and 
assumes they will become reality is a fool.  Risks are inherent in life, 
and while some won't materialize, others will.  I see potential risks in 
having the entire software industry ruled by the GPL.  It's not FUD to say 
there are dangers we need to be cautious of.  That's reality.

Actually, as this discussion continues, I'm starting to think I may have 
been wrong, but not in my concerns about the GPL.  I'm starting to wonder 
if I was wrong to believe that copyleft is a good thing.  I always thought 
the BSD camp was foolish to let proprietary interests appropriate their 
hard work without recompense, and that was because I bought into Stallman's 
rhetoric.  Now I'm starting to think that maybe the BSD license inherently 
provides a better balance between proprietary interests and public ones, 
and maybe I should shift my attention towards supporting BSD-licensed code.

The funny thing is, before this discussion, I was conviced that copyleft 
was a very good thing, even if I had concerns about the "viral" nature of 
the GPL.  I still think copyleft is probably a good thing, but I'm starting 
to wonder if too much of a good thing is still good.  Maybe the BSD folks 
are right, and the proprietary interests don't matter in the end?

Then again, Microsoft can easily use BSD code.  That's a very bad thing,
I think...

Deven