Re: GPL and Economics (was Re: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias))

On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Francois Gouget wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, Deven T. Corzine wrote:
> [...]
> > The GPL is constantly dumping.  That's its nature.
> 
> If that is so, then so are the X11 and BSD licenses, as well as anyone
> putting code in the public domain. When is the last time you bought
> Apache, XFree86, sendmail, bind, etc?
> (really bought, not just bought a CD for the distribution cost or
> support for one of the above)

Who buys a product which is given away for free?

> Sure you may say that there is a mitigating factor in that one can build
> proprietary product on top of one of the above, but as I have shown
> before this can only be temporary, unless you manage to kill the
> community around your open-source competitor.

So what?  It's okay if the proprietary advantage is temporary, as long as 
it stands long enough to recoup the investment, and hopefully make a little 
profit as well.  That's a sustainable economic model, even if the companies
would prefer a permanent advantage.  There's no reason why you couldn't 
have a vital, active puclic project with occasional short-lived proprietary 
offshoots that (hopefully) fold their enhancements back into the public 
project after the proprietary advantage has worn off...

> Thus by your criteria, the state should take action against people
> putting code under the X11 or BSD license, or in the public domain.
>
> And in a similar vein, people should be forbidden from volunteering for
> the red-cross, community events, etc. as this is all dumping.

You're twisting my words, and you know it.  (If you don't know it, then 
you're completely oblivious.)  I never said dumping should be forbidden or 
that volunteers should be stopped.  I said only that dumping was inherent 
in the nature of the GPL.

Dumping becomes most dangerous when there's an enormous imbalance of power, 
as there is in a monopoly situation.  However, since the GPL's power is 
ever-growing, there's reason to believe that it will eventually become 
powerful enough to be dangerous.  And if we can foresee that, we should 
start to consider NOW what the eventual consequences may be.

Deven