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Explaining Open Source Software
scubacuda writes "Mark Webbink, Red Hat's general counsel, has written an informative article explaining free and open source software. Geared towards attorneys, he explains the various licenses and addresses several myths about OSS." One to bookmark.
I see your point, but free stuff makes people like the product, unless the said product is crap, in which case he will know this and just give up. However, if the product is good and useful, people will donate. Its a fact of life, you see it everywhere like here and here. Both those sites give something for nothing, and they manage to make a living perfectly well.
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*sigh*
The trickiest part of GPL-like OSS licenses to me is figuring out where the line on "derivative works" ends.
This is really a problem of copyright law in general and companies that collaborate (source only open to the parties involved) can get into trouble deciding who owns the resultant work, but most closed-source licenses are pretty simple: I can distribute object form only of the Metaware libraries, I can do anything with the input or output of their compiler (my code) and my work which uses their libraries is not considered a derived work (even though they're statically linked).
Linus has clarified where he stands on userland use of the kernel, but lately has made some odd statements about kernel modules distributed in binary form. There's also issues with libraries distributed as GPL instead of LGPL (e.g. the MAD mp3 decoder). If MAD is dynamically linked to my app, but both are contained in a ROM and the "dynamic" loader uses the simplified BFLT format, is my app still independent & not derived (so I can release source to MAD but not my app)? Does statically linking my app mean I must release its source???
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
You missed the point, there are two problems. One is source code, the second is unlicensed software. Having an unlicensed copy of a piece of software can be a huge legal issue. Not having a policy where software have to be approved in some formal way only makes the legal issue worse. "Big company think" is not universally wrong, occasionally they do the right thing. Whether the rare right choice being made was accidental or not I leave to a different discussion.
It seems to me as though he is referring to derivative works when he says "code" in the last sentence of the quote. I do not profess to have a complete understanding of these licensing issues, but with what I do know it seems as though the quote is fundamentally accurate if this interpretation is used.
Who says you have to give it away for free?
Not everything has to be free as in speech and beer, otherwise how would Red Hat/Suse/whoever be able to charge money for their Linux distributions (among all the completely free distro's out there) and not immediately fold?
Customer support is a part of that, but so is offering the package in an easily installable, usable and maintainable set. Look at some of the really Newbie-Friendly distros (xandros and Lindows), both offer easy-to-use versions of Debian (available for $0) and can charge upwards of $100 American for it?
Yeah, that's just for Linux, but still, there's nothing saying that Johnny FooBar _must_ give away his work for nothing, hoping that people will donate money to pay for his costs (or he has to work a day job to pay his bills). If he chooses to do so, that's up to him, but it's not a requirement of OSS.
From what I remember, MySQL isn't GPL'd and requires a commercial license.
You can get it with a GPL license, or pay for another one.
This has happened before. What happens is that the GPL'd copies are still GPL'd and therefore not in violation of any license. Once you distribute something under the GPL, it is GPL'd period.
There is nothing which stops you from no longer providing licenses under the GPL (in which your case your development from that point for wouldn't be open to all), nor is there anything preventing someone else from taking what you had released up to that point and forking it, providing updates to it as well since the GPL license you distributed to them continues. The GPL can't be revoked short of a violation of it's terms.
I'm an admin in one as a matter of fact. There are only two job roles that I can think of that require the ability to install software. Sysadmin and developer.
Most companies don't have developers for starters. And although developers need to install software, they DON'T need to install it on the corporate network. You give you them a few computers, a switch, a hub, and 2pc's worth of spare parts, and an annual budget of about $100 for it. If they break it and can't fix it, it's their own problem.
After all, it's certainly that way for the sysadmin's own test network.