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

[The Thought Assassin]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Leon Brooks wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Aug 2002 14:03, The Thought Assassin wrote (but meant, as
> detailed elsewhere, something a bit different at the point marked *):
> > 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".

> I know of several businessmen who don't really give two hoots about the
> free, but for whom the safety/auditability/independence aspects of the
> GPL are critical.

I would argue that they are "involved with OSS/FS" rather than "outside
the scene" then, and so it is not at all surprising that they have
realised the benefits of free-as-in-market over free-as-in-beer. It's
those who haven't sat down and thought about it (or been sat down and told
about it) that are more likely to have considered OSS than FS

> BSD/MIR licenced software actually fails them because they cannot demand
> or even expect source to it from BSD-licence-using suppliers.

Which doesn't sound like a bad thing (you can just stay with the free
branch of the fork) until you realise that these licensees are using the
free code to draw mindshare and marketshare _away_ from the free version.

> 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.

That's actually the angle of "freeloading" I was getting at above, believe
it or not. See my recent reply to Peter.

-Greg