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

"Deven T. Corzine" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, Roger Fujii wrote:
> 
> > Exactly.  If you want a real world example of this, look at gcc on linux vs
> > java.  Gcc is pretty much the only game in town.  You are stuck with its
> > profilers, debuggers and code generation.  java, on the other hand, even
> > though it's free (as in beer), has a wealth of diversity (forte, jbuilder,
> > not to mention the small vendors) in development tools (and jvms, profilers,
> > compilers, etc).  Any honest person cannot dismiss that GPL has a hand in
> > this situation as the GPL denies any party from carving out a nitch to
> > attempt to make a living.
> 
> It's not that simple.  Java has more competition in large part because IBM
> is spending a lot of money on Java technology to make sure Sun doesn't just
> take Microsoft's place as the industry's taskmaster.  (You gotta give IBM
> some credit -- they seem to have learned some lessons from history!)

While I agree that IBM is definitely making a market for java, the diversity
isn't the necessarily the direct result of big blue.  Sure, they have a jvm,
a wickedly fast java compiler, and contributed various technologies, but they
aren't the only players.  My point is that had sun GPLed the JDK/JRE, I don't
think it would be nearly as accepted as it is now.
 
> On the other hand, who cares if GCC is the only game in town, when it comes
> to C compilers on Linux?

Well, I don't care too much as I run solaris :)   But if you run linux and want
diversity, this is one of the reasons you don't....

-r