4 ms·

I mean, if I am just contributing to the community or using a technology in a non-linking way, I don't see a problem with GPL. However, from a business standpo

by ythn 10y ago

I mean, if I am just contributing to the community or using a technology in a non-linking way, I don't see a problem with GPL. However, from a business standpoint, can you explain to me how linking in GPL code wouldn't just cause my customers to grab the source for free and consume my work without paying? I'm not afraid of using LGPL or GPL with library exceptions, but linking in pure GPLv3 scares me because in my mind it says "Why would customers pay you to use your product when they can just do a git clone and use your product for free?"

jimktrains2 10y ago
> Why would customers pay you to use your product when they can just do a git clone and use your product for free? Support? Consulting? Hosting?
- ythn 10y ago
  In other words, tech savvy customers will not be paying for my product since they will just host locally and use community support forums. And if my product is marketed to tech savvy people, that's a huge hit to my market.
  - jimktrains2 10y ago
    That's not entirely true. There are services I pay for that I don't want to run at home. Sometimes the convenience is worth it. Look at tarsnap. It's basically just encrypting files and sending it to S3, entirely open source, and he's still able to charge. I'm sure he's not living the high life off of it, but most people aren't off single products anyway.
simion314 10y ago
So don't link with GPL code, find a work-around, a different library or write your own code, if the original author has the copyright you could buy a better license for your need. Again GPL protects the user of the code not the developers that want to remove the user freedom.
- ythn 10y ago
  > So don't link with GPL code, find a work-around, a different library or write your own code That's what I do. Hello MIT/BSD > Again GPL protects the user of the code not the developers that want to remove the user freedom. Right, which is why I'm always surprised when people are upset that developers don't use GPL more
  - simion314 10y ago
    The point is if you use BSD like licenses over GPL like then you do not care about user freedom and only care about developer freedom, so it is normal that people that care about free software and not open source are upset, especially when dirty tactics are used to hide the true meaning of free and freedom when using words like viral/tainting/restricting. You can use the license you want my only hope is that you don't miss represent user freedom vs developer freedom, that is all.
  - eeZah7Ux 10y ago
    The answer is in "want to remove the user freedom". Those are often freeloader companies and the decision usually lies in management.
    - simion314 10y ago
      I think some individual developers hate on GPL because they would like to use a library maybe add some things to it but don't want to respect the license.
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    > That's what I do. Hello MIT/BSD But what if you write a library or something that becomes popular, very popular or very useful, and your users and others (maybe yourself) want to add a great feature, but it is something that is very difficult to do, or would require more than a single developer to do - in short, it would take a while to do, if possible at all... ...then company B comes along, sees how well you're doing, and says to themselves "you know, this would be great to have that market - and oh, look - the BSD license...perfect!" So they take your code, add in the changes the users are clamoring for (because they have the resources to do so), then make it all proprietary (perhaps - if you're lucky - with a message buried in 4pt font somewhere that say's a "thank you" and "copyright, etc" to your efforts, as required by the BSD license) - then they market the hell out of it to your users. Your users see it all - and the flock to it, leaving your efforts to wither and die. You won't be able to catch up, and those extra features they added will keep your old users happy. Perhaps they release an API to allow others to use it, but never the source code. They've now locked it up, and all your hard work is for nothing. But hey, you used the BSD license, and all's good, right? /...and this is why OSX is more popular than BSD...

by ythn 10y ago

jimktrains2 10y ago

> Why would customers pay you to use your product when they can just do a git clone and use your product for free? Support? Consulting? Hosting?

ythn 10y ago
In other words, tech savvy customers will not be paying for my product since they will just host locally and use community support forums. And if my product is marketed to tech savvy people, that's a huge hit to my market.
- jimktrains2 10y ago
  That's not entirely true. There are services I pay for that I don't want to run at home. Sometimes the convenience is worth it. Look at tarsnap. It's basically just encrypting files and sending it to S3, entirely open source, and he's still able to charge. I'm sure he's not living the high life off of it, but most people aren't off single products anyway.

simion314 10y ago

So don't link with GPL code, find a work-around, a different library or write your own code, if the original author has the copyright you could buy a better license for your need. Again GPL protects the user of the code not the developers that want to remove the user freedom.

ythn 10y ago
> So don't link with GPL code, find a work-around, a different library or write your own code That's what I do. Hello MIT/BSD > Again GPL protects the user of the code not the developers that want to remove the user freedom. Right, which is why I'm always surprised when people are upset that developers don't use GPL more
- simion314 10y ago
  The point is if you use BSD like licenses over GPL like then you do not care about user freedom and only care about developer freedom, so it is normal that people that care about free software and not open source are upset, especially when dirty tactics are used to hide the true meaning of free and freedom when using words like viral/tainting/restricting. You can use the license you want my only hope is that you don't miss represent user freedom vs developer freedom, that is all.
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago
  The answer is in "want to remove the user freedom". Those are often freeloader companies and the decision usually lies in management.
  - simion314 10y ago
    I think some individual developers hate on GPL because they would like to use a library maybe add some things to it but don't want to respect the license.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  > That's what I do. Hello MIT/BSD But what if you write a library or something that becomes popular, very popular or very useful, and your users and others (maybe yourself) want to add a great feature, but it is something that is very difficult to do, or would require more than a single developer to do - in short, it would take a while to do, if possible at all... ...then company B comes along, sees how well you're doing, and says to themselves "you know, this would be great to have that market - and oh, look - the BSD license...perfect!" So they take your code, add in the changes the users are clamoring for (because they have the resources to do so), then make it all proprietary (perhaps - if you're lucky - with a message buried in 4pt font somewhere that say's a "thank you" and "copyright, etc" to your efforts, as required by the BSD license) - then they market the hell out of it to your users. Your users see it all - and the flock to it, leaving your efforts to wither and die. You won't be able to catch up, and those extra features they added will keep your old users happy. Perhaps they release an API to allow others to use it, but never the source code. They've now locked it up, and all your hard work is for nothing. But hey, you used the BSD license, and all's good, right? /...and this is why OSX is more popular than BSD...