2 ms·

I think what you mean is that it is useful when you want to ensure that people don't take your work and unfairly compete with you with it. Imagine this scenari

I think what you mean is that it is useful when you want to ensure that people don't take your work and unfairly compete with you with it. Imagine this scenario: I spend $1m writing an embedded software development chain. This embedded system will do 90% of what everyone wants. My business model is to charge people for writing the code to make it do the other 10% that they want. Since everybody's 10% is likely quite different, it makes total economic sense for me to release the code under a free license in order to drive adoption of my tool set. There will always be more work for me to do and people willing to pay for that work. But as a commercial entity I have a risk. The risk is that if I release my tool set under a free license, somebody else will pick it up and offer services as well -- competing with me. However, I wrote the damn thing, so I feel pretty comfortable that I can out compete other people. Even if some people take a slice of the pie, if I can get very high adoption by distributing for free (no cost), I will still be ahead of the game. What I'm really concerned about is that somebody may make a proprietary change to my software and lock customers into their version. In this way, I've sunk $1m into the project and they may only invest $1k but be able to lock me out of my own market regardless of whether or not I'm a better programmer. Although the GPL was not built with this in mind (I don't think) it is a very powerful reason for commercial entities to embrace the GPL. In fact my choice of example (embedded tool set) was not entirely random. See: http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/tiemans.html http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/tiemans.htm... As the article mentioned, the choice of free software license is really dependent upon the circumstance. Slowly big enterprises are waking up to the idea that free licenses allows them to create consortium like development endeavours with very low barriers. They tend to use them when trying to stake out territory and when adoption is more important the instant revenue. One day, I believe they will realize the the GPL allows them to take a step further -- to fuel adoption that sells services.

new299 12y ago
Yes, this is what I meant. I also had a specific example in mind. Here's the scenario: You're a hardware vendor, you lead the market. The hardware you sell has also has a software component. You'd like to take software out of the equation while maintaining your lead in hardware. So you release the software under a GPL license. Other hardware vendors can start using the software, but they gain no advantage over you. With luck, because it's free and widely available, your GPL software becomes a de facto standard. You maintain some control over it's development. But overall software becomes less of a factor in purchasing, which is now based on hardware (which is what you wanted, perhaps because your hardware advantage is secure). New entrants into the market will also find it difficult to compete with you on software. Eventually a foundation may form to develop the software (like Symbian for example). Such a foundation pools the resources of a number of vendors, making it even harder to compete on software.

new299 12y ago

Yes, this is what I meant. I also had a specific example in mind. Here's the scenario: You're a hardware vendor, you lead the market. The hardware you sell has also has a software component. You'd like to take software out of the equation while maintaining your lead in hardware. So you release the software under a GPL license. Other hardware vendors can start using the software, but they gain no advantage over you. With luck, because it's free and widely available, your GPL software becomes a de facto standard. You maintain some control over it's development. But overall software becomes less of a factor in purchasing, which is now based on hardware (which is what you wanted, perhaps because your hardware advantage is secure). New entrants into the market will also find it difficult to compete with you on software. Eventually a foundation may form to develop the software (like Symbian for example). Such a foundation pools the resources of a number of vendors, making it even harder to compete on software.