Prev: Get Google adsense account approval in 4 hours
Next: German Language in Europe
From: Mike Schilling on 28 May 2010 02:21
ClassCastException wrote:
> Upshot: I think I'll use BSD-type licenses for now. They're compatible
> with almost anything, license-wise, including the GPL and Clojure's
> license, and have a decent level of respect in the open source world.
> I don't think I can go far wrong if I use the two-clause BSD license
> on my code.

The main difference between BSD and GPL is that BSD doesn't preclude use in
for-profit software. If that's your intent, it's a good choice.


From: Thomas Pornin on 28 May 2010 08:28
According to Mike Schilling <mscottschilling(a)hotmail.com>:
> The main difference between BSD and GPL is that BSD doesn't preclude
> use in for-profit software.

That's only indirectly true. What the GPL does is that when you take GPL
code and reuse it in your own application, and distribute the result,
then whoever receives that application shall have access to your source
code as well under the GPL terms (not only the source code of the GPL
code you have included, but everything you have added to it, too). The
BSD license does not do that: it does not force you to give your source
code, and (that's important) it does not make _your_ application a
BSD-licensed piece of code.

Nominally, neither GPL nor BSD precludes on-profit software. The GPL
just makes it harder to make money out of the sells, because any of your
customers automatically gets entitled to receive the source code, and to
redistribute the software (modified or unmodified) under the GPL terms.
In particular, that customer may, legally, give copies of the software
(and source code) for free.

So the GPL is, in practice (not in theory), incompatible with for-profit
mass-market software. With more specialized software, GPL is not adverse
to money-making: if you make a big, expensive piece of code that you
plan to sell to a dozen big companies, you can use the GPL, because none
of your customers would be keen on redistributing the code under the GPL
(that would be giving the code for free to their competitors).

Also, theory has it that big money resides in support and maintenance
contracts. The software is then some kind of commercial argument, and
you can give it for free since users automatically become potential
customers for your support and maintenance activity. There again, it
does not work well with mass-market software.


There _is_ some mass-market software where profit and GPL should work
well together. These are video games. Theoretically, you could give away
the game engine, and sell the artistic content (which is more than 95%
of the game size, counted in bytes). The GPL has some convoluted wording
with regards to linking; it was initially designed for C. The GPL is
known to be a bit flaky (legally speaking) when applied to code written
in languages with dynamic loading (in particular Java). But it is still
clear that it is legal to distribute a GPL engine which loads
independently copyrighted pictures, music, video, 3D models...

(Please note that I have written "should work well". Theory and practice
are identical... in theory.)


--Thomas Pornin
From: Mike Schilling on 30 May 2010 04:08
Nigel Wade wrote:
> On Thu, 27 May 2010 23:21:16 -0700, Mike Schilling wrote:
>
>> ClassCastException wrote:
>>> Upshot: I think I'll use BSD-type licenses for now. They're
>>> compatible with almost anything, license-wise, including the GPL
>>> and Clojure's license, and have a decent level of respect in the
>>> open source world. I don't think I can go far wrong if I use the
>>> two-clause BSD license on my code.
>>
>> The main difference between BSD and GPL is that BSD doesn't preclude
>> use in for-profit software. If that's your intent, it's a good
>> choice.
>
> The GPL makes no such exclusion. I presume that you've been reading
> the FUD rather than the GPL.
>
> This comes direct from the GPL FAQ:
>
> "If I use a piece of software that has been obtained under the GNU
> GPL, am I allowed to modify the original code into a new program, then
> distribute and sell that new program commercially?
>
> You are allowed to sell copies of the modified program
> commercially, but only under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Right. The GPL is viral, resulting in restictions on the code you add to
it.. BSD is not.


From: Bent C Dalager on 30 May 2010 08:45
On 2010-05-30, Arne Vajhøj <arne(a)vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>
> Since open source requires copyright then no copyright means
> no open source.

If open source "requires" copyright then it is only because in the
current legal regime copyright is mandatory.

It does help, of course, that copyright is such a huge and
indiscriminate sledgehammer you can use it to kill just about
/anything/, including copyright. Open source will tend to use the best
tool for the job even if that tool is copyright.

> In fact open source are some of the fiercest enforcer of copyright,
> because:
> * they need it even more when they hand out source code
> * a large fraction of open source people do not believe in
> patents, so they only have copyright

This doesn't make much sense. Open source doesn't use copyright to
protect its source from being copied and so they do not "have
copyright" in the sense that copyright is protecting their business
model. To the extent copyright is used as a tool at all in open source
licenses it tend to be used to force the source to remain open but
this then is an ideological goal, not a means with which to protect
one's business in any way.

Neither patents nor copyright are needed for software development to
thrive so it seems to me your conclusion is based on false premises.

Cheers,
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - bcd(a)pvv.org - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
powered by emacs
From: Roedy Green on 30 May 2010 22:59
On Fri, 28 May 2010 02:58:08 +0000 (UTC), ClassCastException
<zjkg3d9gj56(a)gmail.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone
who said :

>So I decided to do a little reading on copyright in general. Why does it
>even exist? The nominal purpose, it turns out, is to "promote the
>progress of science and the useful arts" by providing a way for the
>creators of any popular or important work to ensure remuneration,
>basically. Which smells suspiciously like a grant of monopoly

With copyright there is no problem with someone creating a similar
work -- unlike patent, so for example nobody can corner the market on
"how to program in Java" books.

It is required or it would be almost impossible to make money writing
books or programs. Custom programs would survive, but no one-size-fits
all.

--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

Have you ever noticed that any computer search in the movies, is always linear, with, for example, candidate fingerprints flashing up on the screen one after another? The public is still under the delusion that electronic files are microscopic filing cabinets made out of tiny wires or magnetic patches inside the computer. Most lay people are surprised that it is easy for a computer to file things simultaneously by a dozen different schemes, and that they can have any report printed in any number of different sorted orders. With physical files, they are limited to one ordering/access.
 |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3 4
Prev: Get Google adsense account approval in 4 hours
Next: German Language in Europe