Re: Using the GPL (was Re: [EE]: opinion on Willem programmer?)

Apptech <apptech <at> paradise.net.nz> writes:
> (understandably) unhappy. While this is understandable, in 
> either case you are trying to get 100% of the gain from 10% 
> of the work required for the solution. In selected cases the 

No, you are getting 100% of the gain for 0.01% of the work required when using
open source solutions, building on other people's work, and it's legal. And 
your solution will only 'cost' that 0.01% which is, admittedly, contributed
freely, and  might make someone else's day, where he will also add a 0.01% of
his own, and on and on. Or, to put it in some people's favorite units: money::
Let's assume a certain open source OS has a price, its cost shall be dictated 
by the market value of roughly equivalent products. Let's say that number shall
be 3000 USD a copy. Now per line of code that would be 0.001 USD (assuming 3E6
LOC). A 10,000 line contribution would have a market price of $10 and would be 
a one off. If the value of the OS would scale due to market forces to its
present level, of $1 to $10 per copy (of open source operating system media or
download time) then the 10,000 LOC contribution's value would scale too. To
about 3 to 30 cents. Just for scale, a 10,000 LOC application would be a fully
featured email or IRC client with state of the art GUI and more. And, in fact,
it IS legal to charge money for open source software, your own and other's,
including GPL software. 

> world may be a better place if you were allowed to do this 
> but in most such examples the world would simply be a more 
> lucrative place for those who were allowed to charge for the 
> freely contributed work of others after adding a small 
> component of their own. It's understandable why people would

You know what? I agree. But ... there is that pie chart of what a personal
'contribution' would make out in the context of the 'borrowed code'. The slice
of the contribution is invariably a one pixel wide radius in a full circle.
That's because a 10,000 line contribution to the 3 million lines of the 
codebase it is 'aggregated' with is a speck of dust in a desert.

> explicitly release work as PD. The obvious solution is to 
> base your 10% solution on a 90% PD foundation. That you will 

Generally speaking PD is dead because lawyers killed it. It is legal to walk in
a rain forest in Brazil, pick up a frog, and patent it and the molecules it may
secrete worldwide for the pharma industry, as opposed to patenting the drug 
made from it. I wonder what your favorite Creator would have to say about that.
The genesis of the GPL based open source movement involved several failed 'frog
pickup' attempts. That's why its thorns are so sharp on the
'pickup/grab/aggregate' side. Compare to BSD style licenses which are 
grab-friendly.

So, lucratively picking frogs must be done elsewhere. The GPL 'rainforest' is a
no-no for that. Try the BSD 'rainforest' for that. Apple tried that and picked 
a nice frog for its OS X 'technical spaces'. Notice how this is sliding into
politics? I think that GPL discussions are the secret Godwin clauses of this
mailing list. Every time GPL starts being referred to any thread degenerates
into a hissy fit argument. 

Anyway, many people think that open source people are Communists. In fact, they
are mostly Libertarians. My favorite definitions for Communists and 
Libertarians are:

Communist: Someone who thinks that he knows exactly what to do with everyone
else's time, lives and money.

Libertarian: Someone who thinks that he knows exactly what to do with his own
time, life and money.

As you see, by these definitions people who want to grab open source code are
... Communists, while the authors of open source aren't necessarily that ... :)

Peter

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