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My experience with GPL is that it's used to sell commercial licenses. For instance, the Second Life viewer is dual licensed: GPL and Commercial. Several comme

My experience with GPL is that it's used to sell commercial licenses. For instance, the Second Life viewer is dual licensed: GPL and Commercial. Several commercial customers (names redacted to protect the guilty) made changes to the viewer and were later told by Linden they had to purchase a commercial license to avoid violating GPL, even though they were only distributing the viewer internally. I dunno man. That seems like a bait and switch. You start off with "oh. how could we charge you, it's open source" and then turn around and say "pay up or we'll get Eben Moglen to sue you." Seems like a racket to me. But YMMV. I release things under a BSD license, but that's just me. Unlike GPL fans, I don't try to tell other people what license they should release their software under. If you're hip to GPL, by all means use it, I don't think that EVERYONE using a GPL license is running a racket. Just mentioning it so peeps might understand the pushback on EFF/GPL some people feel.

retrocryptid 4y ago
Oh @dingosity, my favourite ex-cow-orker, I think you may be wrong on the bait-and-switch aspect. The third parties involved knew the implications of the GPL'd SL Viewer from the beginning. Maybe not everyone in the organization, but the people who agreed to buy a commercial license knew about it and it was supposedly budgeted for. Though yes. If a company did do a bait and switch like that, it would be bad. But I don't think Linden did that in this case.
rakoo 4y ago
> and then turn around and say "pay up or we'll get Eben Moglen to sue you." No, you turn around and say "you know how it was cool that you could use that thing to do what you wanted ? Well, continue this tradition and make your thing available for others to do what they want. Recognize you're standing on the shoulders of giants by giving back to the community". The only reason one might not want to release under the same license is because one does need money to live. That's a necessity of our current political system and changing it is the logical conclusion of being in the camp of those who want to spread Libre Software
xani_ 4y ago
That's not bait and switch, that's just not the license terms. > even though they were only distributing the viewer internally. That is explicitly allowed. You just have to live with consequences of it being legal for any of the users to take and "bring back to the light". It is either that this company didn't wanted their inside people to do that, or that Linden lied to them about what GPL implies

retrocryptid 4y ago

Oh @dingosity, my favourite ex-cow-orker, I think you may be wrong on the bait-and-switch aspect. The third parties involved knew the implications of the GPL'd SL Viewer from the beginning. Maybe not everyone in the organization, but the people who agreed to buy a commercial license knew about it and it was supposedly budgeted for. Though yes. If a company did do a bait and switch like that, it would be bad. But I don't think Linden did that in this case.

rakoo 4y ago

> and then turn around and say "pay up or we'll get Eben Moglen to sue you." No, you turn around and say "you know how it was cool that you could use that thing to do what you wanted ? Well, continue this tradition and make your thing available for others to do what they want. Recognize you're standing on the shoulders of giants by giving back to the community". The only reason one might not want to release under the same license is because one does need money to live. That's a necessity of our current political system and changing it is the logical conclusion of being in the camp of those who want to spread Libre Software

xani_ 4y ago

That's not bait and switch, that's just not the license terms. > even though they were only distributing the viewer internally. That is explicitly allowed. You just have to live with consequences of it being legal for any of the users to take and "bring back to the light". It is either that this company didn't wanted their inside people to do that, or that Linden lied to them about what GPL implies