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I recommend that you read Bruce Perens' and Patti Annecston's Employee Handbook. Though there was much discussion as to whether or not it was useful, it will probably help out.

http://linuxvc.com/Free_Software/Employee_Handbook /

-Waldo

I guess I should state my background. I am president of Linux Capital Group, chairman of Progeny Linux, and chairman of another company that will be announced in a week or so. People have invested Millions in these companies. Thus, I have fiduciary responsibility.

Amazon suing to protect the one-click patent was a questionable decision, but was not against the law. Cheating on software licenses exposes your company to civil liability and is also against a number of criminal laws.

None of my stockholders would be able to prosecute a case that I have irresponsibly refrained from breaking the law, lying, etc., when such behavior would have saved them money!

I also run Open Source businesses, and can justify that to the stockholders and in court, dispite what's been written on that topic here previously. The business plans are based on Open Source and the businesses don't succeed if we play fast and loose with the community.

Thanks

Bruce

You got it backwards, Brett. Can you guess why I am working on the problem of modifying a license (not necessarily the GPL) for the situation of ASPs? Because some ASPs asked me to. Why did they ask me? To protect their work and their competetiveness. They want to put out Open Source software and benefit from the collaboration of other ASPs and the community. They want to create a commons in which no one party to has an unfair advantage over the other in this collaboration. So, they will put their own code behind whatever license I come up with. And you can bet that will be compliant with the OSD. It's part of their business strategy.

The GPL treats commercial software developers the same way as everyone else. In fact, only paragraph 3(c) of the GPL even has a reference to commercial vs. non-commercial distribution, and not in a way that would impair commercial distribution.

You can't understand this sharing thing, can you? Want to use my GPL code? Fine! Share it with this excellent set of sharing rules we've cooked up called the GPL. Return value equal to the value I put in, and treat me as I treat you. But you're saying no share! gimmie! I want to use the code any way I want, and not give a thing back if that's how I feel, and who cares how much work you put into it! My work is more important to me than your work, so give me your work on my terms! Go over to freshmeat.net and look at all the GPLs on new code. Every one is offering you partnership in that code, if you can just learn to share.

And it happens that yes, I am on some corporate boards. I'd rather have me there than someone who doesn't believe in Open Source, and I bet a lot of people out there feel the same way. Why am I there? I tell them how they can make money while being good citizens of the Open Source community. I do it for some of them for nothing, and others have kindly offered me some shares in compensation. No cash or sale of shares has happened to date, nor does one appear to be close.

And what's all of this stuff about depriving programmers of their livelyhoods? I've got several nice positions advertised on my company web site for people who want to code Free Software. And I'm hardly the only one with open positions. The only reason you don't have one of those jobs is your attitude - unless you can't do the work? I've never seen your resume.

If you've got a mission to carry out, Brett, it would work a lot better if you did it positively. Gee - people accuse the free software folks of whining!

Bruce

Also interesting, Wichert Akkerman (current Debian leader) is on the Advisory board.

At the moment, it looks like it's a Debian VC firm. I'm sure that will change, though. (Even if it doesn't, I'm all for more money in the Debian world.)

Greg

Also interesting, Wichert Akkerman (current Debian leader) is on the Advisory board.

At the moment, it looks like it's a Debian VC firm. I'm sure that will change, though. (Even if it doesn't, I'm all for more money in the Debian world.)

Greg