SDPlaya On BSD Licensing (Slashdot)

>GPL is like a legally-enforced social contract.
That's actually a good description. A social contract that I usually want no part of.

>But how would you feel if you spent 5 years writing a really great piece of software and then some company took it, added a few things, made it proprietary, and made millions freeloading on your work and not giving a penny back?

Honestly, if I spent five years working on something I wouldn't make it public... at least not immediately. Although after a few years, and when there was no big money to be made, I'd release it for free. Real free. Where other people working on their five-year project can look at my code, copy chunks of it, and then sell their program for profit when they're done. I have no problem with that.

>When you get down to it, it is pretty unreasonable to do any significant amount free software development and not be re-imbursed in some fashion.

People get re-imbursed in many different ways. I spent a bit of time in academia and there are many who are content with enough money to live (grant money) and prestige. Do you think Knuth makes any real money off of his ACP books? He's effectively giving away his knowledge for free (and if you think he is simply regurgitating known facts, take a good deep look at the sections he is releasing).

>With BSD, you are just a puny individual developer with no financial resources. A-squisha squisha..

In the end this seems to come down to money to you. To me it's about extending human knowledge. There are MANY people who refuse to even look at GPL code (and many are among the most brilliant minds I've ever met). Considering that the GPL has never been tested in court, many don't want to be potentially tainted for the rest of their software careers because they looked at GPL code. Frankly I don't see how anyone who cares about truly advancing software can write GPL code, but I can understand that there is difference of opinion... and considering that it is your code, you can do what you want with it.

So let me just be clear. I have no problem with making money from software. I've made my fair share, but I also believe that giving away software for FREE is not GPL. The GPL is a selfish license, disguised as freedom (although no rational person would ever use the term free to describe... leave it to RMS to find some good in it).