RE: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias)

> >I disagree.  If GCC were under the BSD license, proprietary 
> companies could
> >developed improved versions, with incremental improvements 
> over the public
> >version.  As long as those improvements are worthwhile, they 
> could stand to
> >profit from making them.  With the GPL, their efforts would 
> be unable to
> >return a profit to justify the investment...
> 
> Yes, but the question is, if the improvements are good 
> enough. I think most 
> of free software developers would still prefer to use GCC. Even most 
> proprietary softwares would probably still use GCC. This is 
> because better 
> compilers often only generate faster code, and speed is not that much 
> important for most softwares.
> 
> On the other hand, companies improving the GCC would not return their 
> strategic improvements to the GCC public tree. So who would 
> benefit from 
> it? Only 2 groups:
> 
> 1. The company.
> 2. Clients who are able to pay for the improved compiler.

Well, first on all you are likely to get the non-strategic
improvement since there is no particular value in maintaining
non-strategic code. Rather the opposite. Beside the direct
cost of maintaining it, peer review and community testing are
likely to lower the number of bugs as well.

Do not underestimate the value of peer review and community
debugging.

> On the other hand the GPL demands all improvements to be 
> returned for the 
> benefit of all.

Which means that the might not be written at all since there
will be MUCH more difficult to get a ROI (return on investment).

So instead of the non-strategic code, you are likely to get nothing.
Is that better?

> In that sense the GPL is more democratic because EVERYONE 
> benefits and not 
> just a small priviledged minority.
> I think the GPL is a good way to democratize technologie.

Please don't use the word democratic. It has nothing to
do that that all. If you mean fair say that.

If the majority voted to torture a person selected at random
to death it would be democratic. However it wouldn't be fair
or humane or whatever.

I'm also unsure what you mean by priviliged minority?
The clients paid a company to write improvements for them
so they HAVE paid for they get. You on the other hand haven't.
So I wouldn't consider it a priviliges.

Sure you and others might have work hard to write whatever
the improvements was applied to, but still you still have the
code so they don't really get any special priviliges that
you haven't do they?

The GPL might or might not be a good "development model".
However try to avoid confusing the issues by appealling to
some sense of unjustice that often isn't true or relevant.