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I tend to agree, up to a point, however I still use the GPL because it at least gives me a leg to stand on for people actually ripping your code and selling it

I tend to agree, up to a point, however I still use the GPL because it at least gives me a leg to stand on for people actually ripping your code and selling it as is... (What I call the packagers) I'm sure that if Linux wasn't GPL, you'd have 'vendors' selling 'HP Linux' and 'Corp Linux' to their locked in customers in no time at all. The only reason Linux grew up to this point is that the vendors are forced to contribute back and cooperate (up to a point). Mind you it might also be the reason Linux is so bloated these days, but at least there is no vendor lock in... As a small example, someone decided a few years back to release a "Arduino UI" over my own simavr[0] as an indigogo project. ie trying to be paid to package a demo I made (for free): he had screenshots, a few promises and no source code. I managed to email the guy telling him I wanted to see the source code of the whole lot and somehow, the project fizzed out. If my project had been BSD, I might have seen someone making money from my project and associate my name with something that I had zero control on. When I give a project away, I want it to stay free for use, and I really hate to see 'packagers' who don't contribute anything at all move over and try to monetize it. Same story as when I released freewares a few years back, I had a note saying it was NOT ok to package it on 'CDs' sold around. [0]: https://github.com/buserror/simavr https://github.com/buserror/simavr

dan00 9y ago
> I'm sure that if Linux wasn't GPL, you'd have 'vendors' selling 'HP Linux' and 'Corp Linux' to their locked in customers in no time at all. The only reason Linux grew up to this point is that the vendors are forced to contribute back and cooperate (up to a point). I don't know. For such a complex project like linux you can't do all by yourself and you most likely want all the improvements and extensions done by other people. To be able to incorporate all these changes you have to keep your code base compatible and the easiest way to do this is to give back your changes. But even if this seems to be the most sensible way to go, an other license might have allowed people to be a lot more unreasonable.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  The *BSDs show clearly what would have happened, most hardware vendors that ship some BSD variant on their hardware don't contribute anything back.
  - dan00 9y ago
    Saying that the only difference for these big projects is their license, seems quite a bit simplified. How is the contribution process organized? How willing are the developers to incorporate foreign extensions? There a quite a few factors that determine how such big projects work and at the end it's IMHO always the people involved that make the difference.
  - petre 9y ago
    That is simply not true. For instance iXsystems contributes back to FreeBSD snd also sponsors the foundation. On the other hand a lot of WiFi router vendors violate the GPL by not releasing the code and contribute nothing back to Linux.
    - asdfjlkasdf88 9y ago
      most != all And one counter-example isn't enough refutation. not saying i believe either of you. just saying, language matters.
      - subway 9y ago
        NetApp Juniper Sony Apple Panassas.... These all have commits to FreeBSD. When you use it, you do tend to collaborate with upstream a bit.
    - jra_samba 9y ago
      For every iXsystems (who are excellent Free Software citizens) you have many NetApp, EMC and Isilons, who use the FreeBSD code to build profitable products on and give nothing in return. NetApp is a very good example, as they contribute NFS code back to Linux but not FreeBSD. Why do you think that might be ?
ygaf 9y ago
>If my project had been BSD, I might have seen someone making money from my project and associate my name with something that I had zero control on. If he went along with his product being forced to be open, what then? It still has your name associated with it, he might still sell some copies. I'm just not getting the principles.
- buserror 9y ago
  I would just have taken his source, compiled it and provided it for free -- he had no real intentions of opening it, and in fact never released his 'code' afterward, which proved my point. it's not the first time I see that, at my previous company, a guy took most of my in-house (closed source) middleware layers and was selling them as a 'product' as is on the interweb.
  - ygaf 9y ago
    I don't think it's right to call that having control. But whatever, your post was more honest than the average GPL advocate's.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Most people wont buy something for money that they could have for free. Not just for utilitarian reasons. Although on one hand the logical consideration is do I value whatever I'm getting in exchange more than the money I am paying on the other hand the perception that someone is getting the software for free, adding 1% value and then charging you creates the impression that they are getting an overly large advantage out of the interaction and nobody likes this. People would rather be objectively worse off rather than feel that they had been taken advantage of. If we look at it from a utilitarian perspective having someone who didn't add much capture all of the commercial value seems to be pretty poor. If the feature he was adding was worthwhile I bet he could have been honest and convinced people to pay him to add it. Everyone would have benefited and paying him would have been worthwhile and necessary because while he couldn't have legally kept it closed source, he didn't have to write or release it at all.
pacala 9y ago
Like safari and chrome for WebKit
ex_amazon_sde 9y ago
I've been in few famous tech $megacorp. I've seen Open Source projects with many companies behind them perform poorly because of BSD/MIT. It's in the best interest of a large company to contribute until the project gains a large userbase willing to pay for extra features, while selling forks (with added proprietary features). Then a company quietly pulls out of upstream development to focus on developing and selling their fork. Chain reaction and the other companies quickly follow the example. Customers trusted that they were using a "mostly" Open Source project but suddenly end up having to choose between proprietary products with an open core.
- ymse 9y ago
  Openstack is a prime example of this.

dan00 9y ago

> I'm sure that if Linux wasn't GPL, you'd have 'vendors' selling 'HP Linux' and 'Corp Linux' to their locked in customers in no time at all. The only reason Linux grew up to this point is that the vendors are forced to contribute back and cooperate (up to a point). I don't know. For such a complex project like linux you can't do all by yourself and you most likely want all the improvements and extensions done by other people. To be able to incorporate all these changes you have to keep your code base compatible and the easiest way to do this is to give back your changes. But even if this seems to be the most sensible way to go, an other license might have allowed people to be a lot more unreasonable.

pjmlp 9y ago
The *BSDs show clearly what would have happened, most hardware vendors that ship some BSD variant on their hardware don't contribute anything back.
- dan00 9y ago
  Saying that the only difference for these big projects is their license, seems quite a bit simplified. How is the contribution process organized? How willing are the developers to incorporate foreign extensions? There a quite a few factors that determine how such big projects work and at the end it's IMHO always the people involved that make the difference.
- petre 9y ago
  That is simply not true. For instance iXsystems contributes back to FreeBSD snd also sponsors the foundation. On the other hand a lot of WiFi router vendors violate the GPL by not releasing the code and contribute nothing back to Linux.
  - asdfjlkasdf88 9y ago
    most != all And one counter-example isn't enough refutation. not saying i believe either of you. just saying, language matters.
    - subway 9y ago
      NetApp Juniper Sony Apple Panassas.... These all have commits to FreeBSD. When you use it, you do tend to collaborate with upstream a bit.
  - jra_samba 9y ago
    For every iXsystems (who are excellent Free Software citizens) you have many NetApp, EMC and Isilons, who use the FreeBSD code to build profitable products on and give nothing in return. NetApp is a very good example, as they contribute NFS code back to Linux but not FreeBSD. Why do you think that might be ?

ygaf 9y ago

>If my project had been BSD, I might have seen someone making money from my project and associate my name with something that I had zero control on. If he went along with his product being forced to be open, what then? It still has your name associated with it, he might still sell some copies. I'm just not getting the principles.

buserror 9y ago
I would just have taken his source, compiled it and provided it for free -- he had no real intentions of opening it, and in fact never released his 'code' afterward, which proved my point. it's not the first time I see that, at my previous company, a guy took most of my in-house (closed source) middleware layers and was selling them as a 'product' as is on the interweb.
- ygaf 9y ago
  I don't think it's right to call that having control. But whatever, your post was more honest than the average GPL advocate's.
michaelmrose 9y ago
Most people wont buy something for money that they could have for free. Not just for utilitarian reasons. Although on one hand the logical consideration is do I value whatever I'm getting in exchange more than the money I am paying on the other hand the perception that someone is getting the software for free, adding 1% value and then charging you creates the impression that they are getting an overly large advantage out of the interaction and nobody likes this. People would rather be objectively worse off rather than feel that they had been taken advantage of. If we look at it from a utilitarian perspective having someone who didn't add much capture all of the commercial value seems to be pretty poor. If the feature he was adding was worthwhile I bet he could have been honest and convinced people to pay him to add it. Everyone would have benefited and paying him would have been worthwhile and necessary because while he couldn't have legally kept it closed source, he didn't have to write or release it at all.

pacala 9y ago

Like safari and chrome for WebKit

ex_amazon_sde 9y ago

I've been in few famous tech $megacorp. I've seen Open Source projects with many companies behind them perform poorly because of BSD/MIT. It's in the best interest of a large company to contribute until the project gains a large userbase willing to pay for extra features, while selling forks (with added proprietary features). Then a company quietly pulls out of upstream development to focus on developing and selling their fork. Chain reaction and the other companies quickly follow the example. Customers trusted that they were using a "mostly" Open Source project but suddenly end up having to choose between proprietary products with an open core.

ymse 9y ago
Openstack is a prime example of this.