Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 13:00:30 +0530 From: "shankar" <shankar@dhanalakshmi.org> To: <questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Commercial Software Message-ID: <000501c6c8e1$8435e840$a6b0113d@abc1>
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Hi, I quote you from your page: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing/index.html "Commercial entities engaged in FreeBSD-related enterprises are also encouraged to contact us. " I am a software writer, my website is http://www.shankar-software.org I want to port my business software to other operating systems. Linux seemed the obvious first choice. After studying it for the past one month I am completely vexed by the gnu licenses covering their glibc libraries. It seems that if I want to port my software to linux, I have to write my own libc libraries (which is a highly time consuming effort) or not-object to giving my software under terms that almost strips me of all rights. Some of the frustrating aspects of the LGPL terms are: a) I must allow the end user to modify my work for "their own use" (should picasso allow the buyers of his paintings to alter it if it doesn't suit their taste?) b) I must allow reverse engineering for debugging even if source is not provided. (should or would an artist allow his artwork to be "corrected" by his customers?) I want to port my software to the freebsd os. Now my question to you are these. 1) Can I keep my software closed source, proprietary? 2) Do you have any C library that will ease the porting of my software to freebsd that I can statically link to, which is not covered by LGPL or any such nonsense. After the royal treatment that we commercial developers receive under windows, entering other oses seem prohibitively time consuming because: 1) Commercial interests are discouraged. One linux user said if I copy protect my system, I will have no takers under linux. So I said fine, linux then does not need me I will go where I am welcome and where I am allowed to protect my interests. The price of anything depends on its need. If my software is very much needed people will take it even if it is closed source and proprietary and copy protected. After all there are a lot of buyers for my closed source, proprietary, copy protected windows version of my software. If it is not needed then people will not take it even if it is free and open source. Ask business users about their ERP source code customization project disasters and if they still would like to have the source code. They will vehemently say no. They want software that will work, that will solve their headaches, that will solve their problems. All these does not necessarily come with free source code. The popularity of an operating system depends on the number of applications (commercial or otherwise) that are available for it. Microsoft understands this very very well. When windows 3.0 was released Bill Gates rolled in a big trolley full of software packages that would run on windows 3.0 on to the stage. That led to the success of windows 3.0 where windows 1.0 and windows 2.0 failed due to lack of applications on it. 2) Porting help like libraries, programming documentation like MSDN is next to non existent or are most difficult to find. 3) There is no Platform SDK complete with all libraries, compilers, header files that encourages developers without stripping them naked. In fact the windows operating system is itself one huge library with thousands of functions that we can call directly. Compared to that huge library of functions, glibc libraries and even the entire linux system seems pitiful, in addition to being unusable by commercial entities. Please let me know if you have a c library for interacting with your operating system that is under the BSD license or something similar. Let me know even if it is still under development, maybe I can lend an helping hand with its completion. Shankar
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