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Leveraging Linux when Hardware is a Commodity?
AKInnovation asks: "My company produces peripheral hardware used in commercial applications, such as retail POS. In our market, amongst other such hardware manufacturers, we are the only ones to offer Linux software solutions (drivers). This distinction has recently won us several large accounts. When the hardware becomes a commodity, and you must compete on the software side to keep the money coming in, how can releasing your code as Open Source be rationalized to management?"
... at first not get that "POS" stands for "Point Of Sale" .. ? ;p
Even if the source is 'out there', customers don't have the time, skills or interest in modifying it for their stock tables, inventory tracking systems or CRM modules. Meanwhile your open source codebase is losing bugs and growing ever larger (and harder for your competitors to assimilate :-)
As I understand it, yes. The GPL requires release of the code only to the customer who pays you for it. You must transfer to the customer full rights to the GPL original code and to your updates to that code. The customer then has the right to release that code under the GPL - or not, which is probably what they will choose. The GPL does not say that you must release back to the developer community, only that you must release full GPL sources to anyone to whom you sell the code. If your customer then sells your code on, they are equally bound by the GPL to give the code, with full GPL rights, to their customers.
I.e. A business can add their business idea to GPL code (including implemented by you) for their own, essentially in-house, purposes. However, they cannot take a lot of GPL code, sprinkle a few neat ideas onto it, and market the result as a closed source package.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
...to this;
Sell it directly, sell it as part of a hardware device, give it to a friend, give it to the world...the GPL does not discriminate.
A key dffierence between a BSD style licence and a GPL one is forking and merging.
BSD Allows unlimtied forks, but you cant merge forks back in (unless they remained BSD)
GPL Allows limit forks, but you can always merge forks back in.
What this means is if a competitor takes your GPL code, you can merge back any advances they made in their copy back into yours.
Thus in this respect the palying field is kept level.
Your advantages are that you were first, you know and undertand to code/product better, you reputation and such. Also if your code sparks interest you may end up with volunteers contributing.
In the end a competitor may be able to catch up with you if you open source, but they could not over take in this area.