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6 Reasons To License Software Under the (A/L)GPL
Henry V .009 writes with a link to Zed Shaw's "newest rant," which gives a cogent description of his reasons for choosing the not-always-popular GPL for his own code: "Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you're using? How many of you tell investors that your entire operation is based on something one guy wrote in a few months? How many of you out there go to management and say, 'Hey, you know there's this guy Zed who wrote the software I'm using, why don't we hire him as a consultant?' You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it. You don't give out any credit, and in fact, I've ran into a vast majority of you who constantly try to say that I can't code as a way of covering your ass."
But the days of quick-flip corporations and ingrate programmers making money on my software are over. My new motto is:
Open source to open source, corporation to corporation.
If you do open source, youâ(TM)re my hero and I support you. If youâ(TM)re a corporation, letâ(TM)s talk business.
A very sensible position, IMHO. Dual-licensing always seemed like a no-brainer to me.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Have you ever stopped to think that if you have fantastic technical skills and nobody will hire you, perhaps it isn't your technical skills that need work?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Here's some good advice for anybody who does anything creative, be it programming,art, writing a story, anything...
Do _not_ create something and then expect the masses upon which you bestow your baby to be happy.
I've seen tons of open source coders quit because their public was only complaining about features and bugs. So don't start out with such expectations. You should create something because _you_ want to make something. If anybody praises you afterward then count your lucky stars. But the only way how you can remain a creative person is by doing it for yourself in the first place.
I'm sure some of my code/programs are being used in the wild. And that makes me happy. I haven't gotten a lot of positive feedback, but that's ok. I'm happy because writing it made me happy.
This is nothing more than typical programmer entitlement EGO issues.
I want credit for this, I want credit for that, I want a job at your company, because I made XXX.
But what about the OTHER people who made YYY, so YOU could do XXX?
What about all the other libraries, API's, and documentation YOU used? Did you give credit to them?
Get off the high-horse, and get rid of all this entitlement you THINK you deserve.
You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it.
No, asshole, some of us think it's important for our employer to know which third party libraries and tools we're using (whether they are open source or not), so they aren't blindsided with a lawsuit. I conjecture that you're projecting your own need to be the hero onto the rest of us.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Let me tell you a little secret. Proprietary software developers are just as big assholes.
Sometimes even worse, because sociopathic bosses and the economy make their contribution as well.
In the closed source world you almost never have complete control of your project. What happens if the OS, language, or vital module of your project is dropped by the maker? If you work on .NET for instance, then one day it could be abandoned, to be replaced by something newer and shinier. In comparison, C and Perl are ancient and aren't going anywhere.
From the article:
That's my first reason I use the GPL:
Because I want to, and if you disagree with it then don't use my software. It's as simple as that.
You know Zed, that's all you have to say. The rest was at best... silly.
A dual-licensed version opens up the possibility of forking and taking business away from me, which I find unacceptable. I can fix bugs just as well as they can, and make money off of it. And because my good name is invested in the product and there is no community for me to foist bugs off onto, I am encouraged to make sure those bugs are addressed myself, to my own standards.
So, in other words--yes, I am better off.
I open-source what I don't intend to use for commercial purposes, or what is based on other open-source components with copyleft licensing terms. What makes me money stays closed.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."