[plug] [link] lwn letter - amazing....

[Leon Brooks]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002 14:03, The Thought Assassin wrote:
>> Most people, especially those not really involved with / following
>> OSS can't tell the difference between the FSF and OS philosophies,

> I don't think anyone not involved with or following OSS would have heard
> anything of FSF philosophies: The Open Source "What can I get for free?"
> ethos may well have impacted on them, (because _everyone_ notices free
> stuff) but the Free Software "What is right and best for our society?" is
> far too esoteric to have a real-life impact on those outside the "scene".

While I very much agree with most of what you said, I know of several 
businessmen who don't really give two hoots about the free, but for whome the 
safety/auditability/independence aspects of the GPL are critical. BSD/MIR 
licenced software actually fails them because they cannot demand or even 
expect source to it from BSD-licence-using suppliers.

I indirectly know of others (such as SAP-DB) who have deliberately chosen to 
release software GPLed specifically in opposition to BSDed, to be certain 
that competitors can't hijack their work, but that others _can_ contribute to 
it. This is still kind of freeloading, but from a different angle: they're 
after free developers. Unlike 99% of the users, they're actually prepared to 
make a trade in order to achieve this: we'll give you this great software to 
use and play with in the hope that you'll improve it for us.

Then there's RansomWare like Blender (E54k paid, E74k promised so far out of 
E100k BTW, lookin' good!) to consider. (-:

Cheers; Leon