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Can an Open Source Map Project Make Money?
Roblimo writes "Bing and Mapquest both use output from OpenStreetMap.org. Mapquest supports the project with money for equipment and access to the code they've written to integrate OSM's work with their display. Bing? They just take from the project and do nothing for it in return. This may be okay in a legal sense, but it is a seriously nekulturny way to behave. Even so, having Microsoft's Bing as a reference might help the project's founder make money. They've put a lot of work into this project, and it's doing a lot of people a lot of good, so they certainly deserve some sort of payback, either direct or indirect. They have a few ideas about how they might legitimately earn a few bucks from their project while remaining free software purists. Do you have any ideas, yourself, about how they might turn a few bucks from OSM?"
GPL tries very hard to ensure that downstream users enjoy the same freedom as those who obtain the code directly. so the freedeom is self-replicating and goes on to those who receive code through intermediaries. There is an accrual of codes with inheritence that is inherent. Far more people have far more freedom when a GPL license is used.
An important effect of this is that anyone who works on GPL code tends to make it available, and it has the potential to make it back into the mainstream. The mainsteam can therefore integrate and grow stronger, and accumulate improvements, where in BSD the tendency is to fragment forever. There is no incentive to contribute back to the main stream. Hence the diaspora of bsd's in contrast with the relative unity of GPL licensed software.
GPL only limits freedom to the extent necessary to prevent others from removing freedoms for yet other licensees.
More code is made available with more freedoms to more people for more purposes with the GPL.
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