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

On 13 Jun 2002, Marco Pietrobono wrote:

>   since you have asked for it, even if I know that your was a rethorical
> question, and you will dismiss all facts that you don't like, as
> always...

It wasn't a rhetorical question.

>   BTW, feel free to discard all of them with one word, as you always
> do...

Such pessimism.  Do you always jump to conclusions about others this way?

That's a good list, but not all of them are significant enough to matter 
all that much.  Of the projects you listed, I'd rank Samba, KDE, GIMP/GTK,
and to a lesser degree, galeon, cdrecord and xmms as significant.  However, 
the reason I suggested exclusing the FSF was because they were developing 
code under the GPL for ideological reasons, not practical ones.  As such, 
it's the significant pragmatic projects that are of the most interest.

Samba is probably the best example, as it's mostly about functionality and 
interoperability and has a lot of company support.  (Of course, the support 
from companies is mostly to ensure they can take advantage of its valuable 
functionality.)  Cdrecord is a good example too; it's about functionality, 
not ideology.  GNOME is all about minimizing KDE's impact by making an all 
GPL alternative, so it's entirely driven by ideology.

The question was trying to determine how many projects, developed under the 
GPL from the start, have been naturally successful, rather than successful 
due to the enormous drive of ideologues out to prove a point.  (And Linux 
itself is a mixed bag -- much of it is pragmatic and naturally successful, 
some of it is driven by ideologues.)  I'll add Samba and cdrecord to my 
mental list.  Maybe KDE too, come to think of it.  Many of the rest are too 
much of a gray area to serve as good examples -- much of the effort into 
many of the GPL projects is ideologically driven...

Deven