FC4 or FC5

[Les Mikesell]

On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 01:44, Ed Greshko wrote:

> You complain/whine about GPL licensing because you have to release your
> source code and can't just sell it.  Seems like you can't deal with 2
> concepts.  Commercial v.s. Open Source.

Actually it is commercial vs GPL.  Many open source licenses
don't restrict what else can be combined and distributed
with the original code.

> Yes, you may have paid more for support of RHEL than XP.  But, what
> applications come with XP? 

Many patented components that can't ever be combined with
GPL'd code and legally distributed....   Consider what is
in the media player alone.  It is easy enough to add
free components like OpenOffice or Cygwin to Windows, but
how do you add device drivers with patented technology
to Linux?

> I wonder how many times you've looked to purchase commercial software
> only to find that product X has feature Y that you want and product A
> has feature B that you want....but you can't find product Z that has
> feature Y and B.
>
> So, what do you do?  Could it be that you compromise and get the product
> that has the "best" fit?  But now, of course, you can't hack the code to
> add in the missing features so you "bellyache" to the vendor. 

And in the commercial case, the vendor has some reason to provide
what the customer wants and may be able to make the necessary
arrangements.  In the GPL-licensed case, it is just impossible
to provide it combined with components that are already be
controlled by some other license.  The end result is that if
you need the feature you have to have two complete systems.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com