'GPL encumbrance problems'

[Tim]

Mike McCarty:

> OTOH, going to court might well mean revealing the source, and
> demonstrating that none of the code is actually derived kills any
> trade secret status of the code, because it has been revealed.

Is it *really* a killer of a product if the source is available?  We
know how a car is built, but that doesn't put Ford out of business
because Holden can do the same thing.  How something is built isn't the
be-all and end-all of it's existence.

Not to mention just how difficult it can be to make sense of someone
else's coding.  ;-)

> In any case, companies are unwilling to risk going to court
> in order to use Linux, when other OS with more interpretable
> licenses exist, and which are as cheap as Linux when you factor
> in the support issues which come with the "cost free" Linux
> versions.

Which harks back to my point, do you really care about also coding for
this OS as well as all the others?  Do you make enough money in other
ways?

Tim:
>> There's plenty of other computer OSs to earn your living through, with a
>> wider user base, too.  And have we *really* suffered, as Linux users,
>> because we don't have Microsoft Office, et all?  Much of what I've used
>> that's commercial hasn't been "better" than what wasn't commercial, just
>> different.  Thus far, virtually everything has been an improvement, the
>> more I've moved into using Linux instead of the dark side.

> In part it depends on whether you consider deployment good for an OS.
> If you don't mind being a 2% market forever, then you don't care
> whether you get deployment. If you want to grow, then you have to
> ask whether the deployment you are missing is deployment you want.

That's a big part of it.  There's plenty of things out on the market
that do quite nicely for themselves, they don't dominate the market, and
they don't need to.  They earn their creators something that they're
content with.  Some people are a bit obsessional about growth.

> It also depends on whether you think that eventually everything
> you will ever want will eventually be provided in a form which
> conforms to the GPL, and whether you are willing to wait. In particular,
> I'm aware that many new devices have proprietary interfaces, so
> you can't create device drivers for them in a timely manner. This
> is a topic of discussion here, on a frequent basis. Is that something
> you consider "suffering", or is it just a minor nuisance? Or is it
> something that you think you can defeat by refusing to purchase these
> items? If the last, then 2% of the market is not much muscle, and we
> wind up with the deployment question again.

With any computer OS there's always something that you don't have but
the other one does.  Depending on your needs you get what suits you
best.  Much as I'd like to be able to just buy any hardware off the
shelf and plug it in, I see no point in Linux being the same as the
others, you might as well use the other instead.  Leading to:

> Some people seem to *like* the idea that they are suffering in some
> way, and like to enjoy it being because "other" people are "greedy".

Well, the world is full of masochists and sadists...

I stopped a lot of my suffering by moving to Linux.  ;-)

>> As an abstract concept, I can't really think of a way of making masses
>> of money out of selling fancy writing paper, and aren't concerned that

> I don't understand what the allusion is.

If I can see that *something* isn't a way to make a living, I don't
attempt it, I do something else.  I don't demand that I can make a
living from something just because I want to.  More to the point, I
don't demand to change the nature of something so that I can exploit it.


>> I tend to view Linux like many other things that are hard to define
>> their worth in dollar terms, but it's existence is worthwhile.  Not
>> everything in life should be about money.

> Hmm, you may be one of the "some people" I mentioned above.
> 
> Eating is often about money, and is something I like to do
> on a regular basis. I love creating software, and I want to
> have a job doing what I love to do. So long as the GPL applies
> to GNU (and "Linux" is mostly GNU) then GNU will not be a target
> of my efforts.

Fair enough.  For various reasons, I also don't see Linux as somewhere
where many people will be able to make a living out of it.  There's an
ethos about it that's it's open-source, people expect it, and chose it
because of that.  If you're hoping to extract money from people who
chose and OS because they wouldn't have to spend much on it, you're
trying to create a market where there isn't one.

It's a bit like hoping that you can make a living from selling luxury
cars to hippies.  You know they don't want them, aren't willing to
splash out the cash.  So you concentrate on some other demographic
(Linux isn't the only computer OS around, there's plenty of others that
you can earn a living through, so you do that).

I spent years working in schools, I taught all sorts of things to people
who asked me how something worked.  I wasn't a teacher, I was just
there, and enjoyed that aspect to helping out, while doing other things
(e.g. while you're there to fix the PC, someone asks you how it works,
and you explain the basics).  Doing so didn't stop other people from
being paid to teach the same thing.  I wasn't going to demand payment
for every little thing that I did; it smacks of prostituting yourself if
you turn anything and everything that you can do into a pay as you go
activity.  So I can certainly appreciate an OS that is more communal in
nature than commercial.  It's a part of computing that gives back, where
the others take.  It (nor GPL, et al) doesn't prevent the others from
being successful.


> Those things I wish to contribute to others, I don't do by
> hamstringing them with the GPL or even LGPL. I do it by
> putting them into the public domain. Then it really is free.
> GPL and LGPL are, IMO, not the way to contribute to a free
> effort. I am philosophically opposed to them, as well as
> practically opposed to them.

I don't have too much of a problem with them, because they're not the
only way of doing things.  You don't like them, you use another model,
you're not prevented from doing so (as you've said).  But the notion of
GPL is something I'm used to - my background's electronics engineering,
and I would never consider that the circuit diagrams for anything that
I've built are not for the eyes of other people; and I consider anyone
that won't supply a diagram for something that I'm trying to repair as a
complete pain in the neck.  And if they'd built something based on
something that I'd made, then told me that there was no way in hell that
I could see the schematics for it, I'd think them an utter ass.
Their /code/ doesn't need to be kept secret, nor is it really possible. 

Going the other way (imposing conditions on users), I find EULAs highly
despicable.  They put ridiculous burdens on you.   Whenever there's some
sort of contract imposed on something, there's always going to be some
disadvantage.  But enough people don't object to GPL for it to continue
on.  Let those who like the idea use it.


> For those who live in the USA, I recommend investigating Benjamin
> Franklin's position on patents. He was opposed to having a patent
> office in these USA, and failed. He therefore indeed got patents, and
> promptly put them into the public domain, because he was
> philosophically opposed to profiting from something that could benefit
> his fellow man.

It's a concept that I have sympathy for.  I have no sympathy for
*rampant* profiteering.  A case in point is/was wheelchairs; their
design was patented, so the only way to get one was to pay an
exhorbitent amount of money for them.  Some couldn't afford to.  We
could get (essentially pointless) computers for disabled kids without
any dramas (it was trendy to give grants for that), but we couldn't get
wheelchairs for some who needed them (no budget for it, way too
expensive).

I think patents are a bit too different than GPL, though.

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