George Barca wrote:
On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:41:58 +1100, Terry Porter
<linux-2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What type of compensation are you referring to?
Being compensated if I write a book rather than people feeling
they can freely copy it and give it to their friends for example.
I don't believe in giving stuff away unless every single entity
is giving stuff away and that will never happen.
Not clear that you understand GPL.
There are plenty of people giving stuff away right now. Richard Stallman
gave away GCC. 10s of thousands of GPL coders have given away their code,
including myself.
Bad choice of words. What I meant was that the only way the give
it all away free system works is if everyone is doing it.
Look at free software for example.
Some person sits at home nights and weekends writing a CD burning
program and then gives away the source for others to use. Now
Dell comes along and packages it as part of pre-installed Linux
on a system and makes a profit.
That can happen with the BSD license but not with GPL.
I personally think the person is an idiot and if the program was
good enough he should protect it and sell it commercially.
However if everyone was just using the program and giving it
away, like the author did, then it wouldn't matter.
The problem arises when some make money off the work of others.
We did so willingly, and were happy to do so. Before I gave my code away,
(under the GPL) I already felt compensated.
I don't believe in patenting a keystroke but yet I do believe
that if a person comes up with a new method of calculating Pi to
the billionth decimal place, he should be compensated by anyone
who uses his method commercially.
What if he gets the idea through a government-subsidized education or by
way of a government research grant?
Basically I believe that if a person plows, sows seeds,
cultivates the land and so forth he should be entitled to reap
the benefits and he should be protected from others trying to
worm their way into his action.
One thing I find disturbing about the Linux/OSS community is that
their seems to be a sub-group of activists that for some odd
reason feel they are entitled to everything for free.
Which sub-group of activists are you referring to ?
People who can't understand that patents and copyrights and other
forms of protection exist for a reason and that reason is to
ensure that the work that was put into the product is paid for in
some fashion.
What seems to me the most likely future model of FOSS development
resembles the Linux Foundation model. A bunch of people with money
realize that if they work together they can make something useful to all
of them for less than they can buy it for or make it for individually.
The product is incidentally valuable to others who don't contribute.
That is the way it works now with the kernel. In the future it will
happen with distros and with specific applications.
One way to help this along in a big way is to design a given FOSS
application to work on all OSes. When a Linux app also works on Windows
and Mac OS, it is far easier to get people to contribute. A few good
Linux people on each project can be there to look out for the interests
of Linux users. Then the Linux-specific effort is far smaller than the
total effort going into the cross-platform app. The cross-platform apps
constitute a bridge to Linux to be used by current Windows users, and
the OS monopoly is broken.
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