Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 06:37:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Trevor Johnson <trevor@jpj.net> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Stallman now claims authorship of Linux Message-ID: <20010419051419.Z5664-100000@blues.jpj.net> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010418213837.00bcb100@localhost>
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> Not true. Cygnus was only marginally profitable until it began to > sell packaged software, much of it licensed under licenses other than the > GPL (e.g. the eCOS license, which does not contain the GPL's "poison pill"). If by "poison pill" you mean the requirement to provide sources to those to whom you distribute binaries, you're wrong. See section 3.2 of http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/license.html . > >The support model is marginally profitable, but far from lucrative. When I > >worked at Cygnus Solutions, the company had experienced some really tough > >years in the past and was trying to transition to a product model. It's > >much harder to sell support than it is to sell a box. A box of plastic disks? > In short, the myth that Cygnus was highly successful is just that: a myth. The Red Hat stock for which the company was sold was worth $674 million at the time (about $75 million now). SCO and BSDI were sold for less (228 million for SCO--$34 million now). > >If I want a > >custom version of gnucash to suit the needs of my company, I can hire > >Brett to make the modifications for me, and Brett can insist on being > >paid lavishly for his work, especially since I'm asking him to touch > >this disgusting GPL code. > > If I were to abandon ethics and do this, What's unethical about it? > The GPL hurts Microsoft's potential competitors far more than it > does Microsoft. Microsoft, which is now rich, can afford to throw > hundreds of programmers at a project to reimplement everything > from scratch. But small competitors need to concentrate on the > innovative parts of their code and re-use existing code for the > more mundane functions that no one should have to program again! > The GPL prevents them from doing this and thus cripples their > development process. If you want to see competition for Microsoft, > oppose the GPL. The GPL is a limited grant of rights from the author to you. If you are willing to grant the same rights to others, then you may reuse the code. I suppose you want computer hobbyists, or government agencies, or someone, to provide their work to the "small competitors" with more rights and fewer restrictions than under the GPL. Well, some do, and some choose even more restrictive licenses (or no license, which is also more restrictive). If the GPL didn't exist, people would choose, or make up, something else that likely would not suit you either. Just as some of us don't enjoy being paid a pittance as a consultant, others don't want their work turned into a closed-source product. -- Trevor Johnson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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