Eh. You should read the original, if you haven't: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=928 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=928 Your anecdote about linksys does not undermine ES

Eh. You should read the original, if you haven't: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=928 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=928 Your anecdote about linksys does not undermine ESR's central thesis, at all. He argues that under the presumption open-source is more efficient, the market will punish those who remained closed. That is not refuted by pointing out a singular example of a company and their dalliances with various licenses. I think that point is an interesting one to consider and needs a far more well formulated response than simple anecdotes. Your second point is more in line with the story, namely that the goal isn't "efficiency" but "freedom". People who release their code as GPL'd code for freedom and other philosophical reasons are fundamentally different than those who release it for pragmatic reasons (that, in the end, open-sourced code is better code). > It's not a loss to me if you refuse to use my code because it's GPL'd.... So the situation is the same for me either way. ESR addresses this directly. Yes, it is a loss to you. Just not maybe to the function ("fairness") that you happen to be optimizing. If your goal was to create the best XYZ library, you've lost mindshare, potential contributors, and possibly created a competitor. This is true whether they are legitimately scared or whether they are scared due to FUD. > Without the GPL, you would have used it and not given anything back. This is not necessarily true. I'll give you three examples. 1. I could want to use your library as a monolithic piece and give back the changes I made to that piece. You haven't allowed that. (ie, versus an LGPL license). 2. I could succumb to FUD and just not want to go down that path, despite the fact that I would have been an otherwise good member of the community. 3. I could enter into the relationship intending to withhold my changes, eventually become dependent on having the best XYZ library in the world, and eventually realize the most cost-efficient way to do that is to share my changes and have them be incorporated into everyone else's (which we are presuming is true, since we are presuming open source > closed source).