Re: Again: list of advantages of the xGPL

At 02:55 PM 7/15/02 -0400, Deven T. Corzine wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Roland wrote:
>
> > At 11:24 AM 7/15/02 -0400, Deven T. Corzine wrote:
> >
> > >Stagnant, inactive projects are different -- they don't have much inherent
> > >advantage for contributing back to the open project, if it's not really
> > >moving much at all.  Such projects may need the added protection of 
> the GPL
> > >or another "copyleft" license to prevent abuse.
> >
> > Exactly, I think WINE fits in this category.
>
>Are you sure?  Wine seems pretty vital and active.  Freshmeat ranks it with
>a "vitality" score of 32.08% right now.  Sure, the Linux kernel ranks at
>81.50%, but Apache only ranks at 2.44%.  No, I don't think Wine needs the
>protections of the GPL as much as many less active projects do...

Well, the discussions here about the Direct3D stuff prove you wrong...

>Today, that's very true.  But the GPL's creeping dominance is inexorable.
>Even Microsoft could make a business mistake and go out of business, but
>the GPL codebase will just keep growing, even if it leaves a trail of
>broken companies behind it.

I imagine the GPL like a huge, hideous, creepy mass, moving and growing 
slowly but steadily. Isn't it scary? :))

> > If there is a large userbase probably one of those users will finally
> > implement the feature himself. Its all statistics. In a large userbase
> > there will probably be
> > a) several programmers
> > b) of whom at least one will be willing to implement that feature
>
>That's a convenient theory, but a flawed one.  The history of free software
>has shown little interest by the programmers to apply the ease-of-use sort
>of polish that unsophisticated end users crave -- and that's not surprising
>since the programmers don't find the unpolished version difficult to use.

Well, but we are seeing Linux becoming more and more of a polish...see also 
OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc...


>Yes, that sucks, but having that product under the GPL would only help you
>if you have the skills and time to code that feature, if you don't have the
>money to pay for it.  My question was how to come up with money if people
>lack the skills, time or motivation to do it themselves, so as to pay for
>someone to write the code...

Well, in my case I'm just the guy who happens to be the user and 
programmer. My job here is to code around things like that among 
others...to make them work.

> > >However, my question was about incentives to FUND new xGPL development.
>
>Funny, you didn't bother to answer this one.  You just turned a blind eye
>to the core question here.

I thought the answer was already given: there will be an incentive to 
create a new product when there is demand for it. It's the same law that 
applies to closed source.

> > >Certainly.  Of course, don't be surprised when another company looks at
> > >what happened with Transgaming and decides that the "Street Performer
> > >Protocol" is unworkable -- and sticks with closed software instead...
> >
> > And thats also what happened to the WINE project. People realized that
> > the BSDL didnt work as expected, and they decided to switch to the LGPL.
>
>It's true that the BSDL didn't force TG to release their code.  But the
>"harm" suffered thereby seems somewhat hypothetical in nature.  Maybe it
>truly exists, or maybe it was an illusion that was perceived as reality.
>How can we be certain either way?

good point...

Roland