[lug] GPL/Open Source License Questions

[Philip Cooper]

On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 12:48:41PM +0200, rm at fabula.de wrote:
> On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 09:42:33PM -0600, Philip Cooper wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Far too many people release under GPL
> > without thinking about the consequences.
> 
> Ok, this is a very dangerous subject prone to flame wars (just had an
> uggly one on comp.lang.lisp), but let me add some comments from some-
> one who basically puts all code under GPL (and makes this an require-
> ment in negotiations with customers): 
> 
> I didn't pick GPL because it was the most-often mentioned licence.
> I think for my (and my customers) needs it's the best and fairest
> licence.

I did not actually mean to disparage any issuers of GPL.  I in fact
appreciate any open source software and respect the hell out of anyone
who releases it.  Forcing derivative works to have the same liscense
is a negative for me was my point.

> > Apple could not have
> > developed os-X based on Linux.  
>  
> Care to explain? What hinders you (read: anybody) to run a pro-
> prietary display system on top of a free (aifs[1]) OS kernel?
> 

I love os-x.  *nix with a pretty face.  Apple has released Darwin as
open source.  I think os-x is much more than a gui on top of bsd.
Windows a long time ago made a decision to put the gui (ie windows)
stuff inside the OS.  Unix and Linux took an intentionally different
path and put the windows system (x11 CDE whatever) outside the OS.
The result is the windows stuff was more responsive (faster) to the
user but less stable.  I over-simplify but thus windows won the
desktop battle (user experience matters most) and unix took the server
space (stability matters most).  

It should be noted that with the huge speed improvements in hardware,
the speed issue it moot.  Remember Lotus 123 beat out visicalc because
it was speed oiptimized for X86 but hardware rendered that advantage
obsolete and they have lost the market.  I digress.

os-x has gui and os stuff mixed as some points in-stead of stacked
like linux and x11 (and KDE or gnome or whatever).  They could not
have done that with GPL'd Linux.  BSD and their license is (by my
definition and not everyone's) more open if you can do whatever you
want with it or it's derivitives.  Gnome might be great but Aqua
rocks.  It is possible to crash Aqua and take down the OS.  Rare but
possible.  This will happen far less in Linux and x11. Gui may crash
the the os keeps right on ticking.

> 
> > It stifles the use of the software by
> > anyone who is concerend about their use or potential use far in the
> > future
> 
> Why? To me there seems to be not a single point of uncertainty about
> the possible allowed uses. And, at least in my work situation, the value
> of a product is meassured by it's usability (reliability etc.).
> Licencing doesn't contribute to that.
> 
Some people misunderstand.  You can take GLP software and modify it
for your own purposes without restriction.  If you think the result
might have value (ie you could license it) you can't with GLP.  Yahoo
uses a marked up version of gnuplot to produce stock charts.  They do
not publish their hacked version of gnuplot.  It has value to them for
use but none for resale  (I know you can sell GLP software...I mean
resale as in license).  If I wanted the potential to license my
charting software I would start with a less restricted code base.
Even if I intended to release it as open source.

> Hmm, can i recompile OS X on my PC, Alpha or
> Sparc? Weeeeeell, kind of, except, major important parts are
> missing.

Right, recompile Darwin yes...OS-X no.

-- 
Phil