Re: "Licences Wars"

On Sunday 23 November 2008 13:51:01 Shlomi Fish wrote:
> On Sunday 23 November 2008, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 19, 2008, Shlomi Fish wrote about "Re: [hackers-il] "Licences
>
> Wars"":
> > > Furthermore, I don't think the FOSS world is under any threat from
> > > proprietary software vendors, that can be prevnted if I GPLed all my
> > > code. Can you cite any possible substantial threat?
> >
> > Thinking of future threats is hard (in the banking business, this is a
> > whole profession, and as you can see lately, the haven't been doing a
> > very good job. But as they say, "Hindsight is always 20:20", and it's
> > easier to look at the past.
> >
> > And the experience of the last 20 years indeed shown that proprietary
> > software vendor's use of BSD has been a problem to free software. Not a
> > huge problem, certainly nothing that could ever kill free software, but a
> > problem nontheless.
> >
> > Let me give you just a few examples.
> >
> > In the second half of the 90s, X-Windows was quite popular - a department
> > (in universities, companies, etc.) would have strong Unix workstations
> > (from Sun, DEC, SGI, HP and other vendors) and people would have cheaper
> > machines showing the output from the strong machine using X-Windows. As
> > MS-Windows grew popular, people wanted to use their PC running Windows to
> > display X-Windows sessions. But unfortunately, the only X server
> > available for Windows was commercial software (Exceed), which could
> > happen because X was BSD-licensed and not GPL. Users (at the time, most
> > had corporate or university funds - they weren't home users) bit the
> > bullet and paid. It took literarly years before a free X server for
> > Windows became available.
>
> I agree this is a problem. However, if X-Windows were GPLed, then the
> people who made Exceed and wanted to sell it, would not have made it in the
> first place, because they had to make it GPLed. So either they would have
> implemented it from scratch or not at all. It is possible that a different
> group would have created a free X server for Windows, but it is possible
> that no free X server would have been available at all. And if a different
> group could have created a free X server for Windows without Exceed, they
> could have certainly created it with it.
>

Now that I think of it, I have another vital thought experiment to add to 
this. If X11 had been initiated under a non-BSD-style-licence, then it is 
possible it would not have become as ubiquitous as it is in the UNIX world, 
thus making it irrelevant to port it to Windows in the first place. We can't 
tell that for sure, but I think it is a possibility.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish (who is now trying to prepare a coherent document out of this 
thread).

-- 
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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Original Riddles - http://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/

<mauke>    I'm not interested in what you're doing; what are you trying to 
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<PerlJam>  mauke: I'm trying to achieve world peace and this regex is
           the last thing standing in my way! ;)


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