Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 22:37:44 -0600 (MDT) From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, miker@cs.utexas.edu (Hung Michael Nguyen) Subject: Re: What's so evil about GPL Message-ID: <199607140437.WAA13056@rocky.mt.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <199607131854.UAA01619@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <199607131746.MAA03210@oink.cs.utexas.edu> <199607131854.UAA01619@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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J. Wunsch writes: > As Hung Michael Nguyen wrote: > > > I have heard many a times on the various FreeBSD fora that GPL is in some > > way 'bad'. Can somebody clue me in as to exactly why (esp. vs. the BSD > > copyright)? > > Basically, three points here: [ Point 1 deleted ] > . You are forced to become a software redistribution institution once > you have modified some of the source code, and intend to redistrib- > ute your modified work. . You are *forced* to distribute any changes you make (significant and/or insignficant) as sources, which may be difficult for 'political' reasons or for technical reasons. If the reason your product is 'better' than your competitors product happens to be something that took a significant amount of time and $$ to develop, having to give away the source code means you are much less likely to recoup your investment. > . You are explicitly requested to demand at most the distribution > costs as a fee, but nothing more. Nope, the GPL allows you to charge whatever you want. You can charge a billion $$ for the code, but that person could turn around and give what they have away to anyone. So, the 'effect' of the GPL is to force people to sell their 'distributions' or 'packaging' of the code, and not the code itself. In effect, programmers become 'publishers', since the time and effort we spend coding isn't worth any monetary value unless it's done for the sake of 'maintenance'. Once the code is written, the code has no intrinsic value. The value is in the 'time' taken to do the product, not in the product itself. So, many of the folks who distribute GPL sources (Redhat, Caldera) copyright their packaging of the sources, but not the sources themselves. Nate
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