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Remember that libraries licensed under the GPL don't count, as far as startups go. You'd be surprised at how many of the libraries you use in hacked up code on
by tsally 17y ago
Remember that libraries licensed under the GPL don't count, as far as startups go. You'd be surprised at how many of the libraries you use in hacked up code on a daily basis are ones you can't release with a closed source product.
- plinkplonk 17y ago"You'd be surprised at how many of the libraries you use in hacked up code on a daily basis are ones you can't release with a closed source product" I thought GPL libs could be used n a web based project? PG's article says (emphasis mine) "One of the reasons to use Lisp in writing Web-based applications .. "
- gaius 17y ago"Release" being the operative word. You can do anything you like with GPL code you run on your own kit. SAAS is a huge end-run around the GPL.
- bodhi 17y agoIsn't the Affero GPL supposed to address the end-run problem? I guess I should check myself really: [Seems it is](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License).
- randallsquared 17y agoI like the GPL, and I like SAAS. It's not an "end-run around the GPL" unless you believe that the object of the GPL is to stop people from making money from programming. If, instead, you believe the rightful purpose of the GPL is encouraging people to control the software on their own hardware, then SAAS fits in with that goal quite well. Letting people use my computer with my software on it for some task does not make my computer (or my software) theirs, and it shouldn't.
- jrockway 17y agoThe GPL will also kill your entire family when you're not looking. You should use the much better "jrockway is awesome license", which gives you the freedom to give me all your money. I like that one a lot more. (Also, what is with all the anti-GPL FUD on this site? Have any of you guys read the license, or do you just like to bash it because you don't like Free Software?)
- tsally 17y agoI'm actually very much for the GPL. Before you criticize people for not reading, you might want to do a bit of reading yourself? My comment history clearly places me in the pro-GPL camp, and there's nothing about my parent comment that suggests that I don't like the GPL.
- weavejester 17y agoWell, the second sentence of the talk excerpt reads: "When you're writing software that is only going to run on your own servers, you can use whatever language you want." If you're not distributing software then the GPL doesn't apply. A web-based start up can use as many GPL-based libraries as they want.