Re: Again: list of advantages of the xGPL

At 05:41 PM 7/15/02 -0400, Deven T. Corzine wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Roland wrote:
> > 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.
>
>Luckily, your company can afford to pay you to do that.  What if they
>didn't have enough resources to afford your services?  Then where would
>they be, open source or not?

I just want to tell you one story that happened to me. We use the mm.mysql 
JDBC driver. I once had a problem with it, and after a little testing I 
figured out that it was a bug, or at least something that could be enhanced 
in the driver(I don't remember for sure). Well, I emailed the developer of 
that open-source driver about the problem. Guess what, after 45 minutes he 
had not only fixed the bug, but recompiled everything and sent me back a 
fixed binary(java bytecode) of the driver. I tested it, and yes, it worked 
like expected! Our company didn't have to pay one cent for anything! No 
consulting charges.

> > > > >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.
>
>No, you suggested that some user/programmer will conveniently write it for
>everyone.  While that can happen, if nobody steps up to do it, the only way
>it's otherwise likely to happen is if someone is paid to do it.  In order
>to pay someone to do it, the money has to come from somewhere.
>
>Where will the money come from to pay for end-user coding where there's
>definite but diffuse demand?  You haven't addressed this question yet.

How about the MySql database? It is under the GPL. Who has paid for the 
development?

Roland