Re: licensing

On 19 Oct 2003, Simon deWeerdt wrote:

> I don't see what is wrong with proprietary software people making a
> profit.  I DO see something wrong with idealists insisting everyone
> write software for free.

  If people are to have a conversation we need to ensure people are
talking about the same thing.  The GPL has been seen as idealistic by
some, while others consider it a very practical business decision to help
facilitate (accelerate) market corrections.

  Free/Libre software is about freedom, not price: think of the pragmatic
"free market" not the unlikely "free beer".

  The GPL and other reciprocal free/libre licenses do not insist anyone
writes software for free, it just limits derivative software from being
considered a manufactured good by not allowing royalty payments.  Royalty
payments are one single incumbent business model, not what determines
whether software is commercial or not (GPL'd software can be commercial
software)  or whether software developers will be paid or not.

  If anyone is curious about the separation of this single problematic
business model/methodology known as "software manufacturing" from the
software sector generally, see the mini-history reference in a submission
I am making to a number of Canadian MP's:

  http://www.flora.ca/copyright2003/section92.html#history
  Software history

  The origins of our movement can be found in the formation of the 
  software sector generally. Prior to the 1960's software was always
  bundled with hardware as part of an integrated device. You had a device
  that could do word processing, but it could not be easily reprogrammed 
  to do other work.  Hardware was obviously manufactured, distributed and
  sold on a per-unit basis and thus the bundle of hardware and software 
  was marketed that way.

  In the 1960's the software sector formed with the separation of software 
  from hardware. At this point two very different camps were formed. There 
  were those who felt that software should be treated the same as 
  hardware, with those in the "software manufacturing" movement relying
  almost entirely on business models from the manufacturing sector. This
  subset of the software industry was very successful from the 1960's up 
  to today.

  Another group of people noticed that software, being intangible and 
  naturally non-rivalrous, has very different attributes than hardware. 
  They felt that there was no need to arbitrarily limit software and
  software business models to those from the manufacturing sector, and 
  think of per-unit royalty payments as simply one business model among
  many.


> You may be right.  It depends on what you want the software used for. I
> think both licenses allows the widest use while preserving copyright.

  By the way, you don't need to dual-license software in BSD and GPL as
the BSD is GPL compatible.  You may already mix both GPL and BSD code in
the same binary.  Both BSD Unix and Linux have a mix of both within the
kernels, with most BSD kernels having any GPL licensed code in a directory
you would exclude if you were compiling against software that was not
licensed GPL compatible.

  The GPL does not say that all software linked with GPL must also be
licensed GPL.  What it says is that all linked software must offer a
license that is GPL-compatible.  For a list of GPL compatible licenses
(which includes the new BSD license, but not the old one) see:
  http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses


---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
 electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than 
 politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/