Last time I checked, the price of a Segway was about the same as for a fairly decent used car. I'll get a whole lot more out of that car than I'll ever get out of the Segway.
I think you're confusing rights with privileges. Software licenses grant privileges, not rights. There's typically a sentence in licenses that says something along the lines of "if you don't agree with these terms, you may not use this software," i.e. you lose your privilege to it. When you choose to use GPL software, you agree to its terms, including the one that says that your own work has to be GPL as well. If those terms seem unreasonable to you, then don't accept them. Nobody's being forced to do anything here.
Where in the world did you get this idea that developers have (or should have) the right to "do whatever they want?"
Now just imagine once 3d printers become cheap enough for the common household... Manufacturers of small cheap trinkets had better be worried because their time is next.
Well, first they need to invent 3d scanners, and I haven't heard of those just yet. So them manafacturers are safe a little bit longer.
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Last time I checked, the price of a Segway was about the same as for a fairly decent used car. I'll get a whole lot more out of that car than I'll ever get out of the Segway.
I think you're confusing rights with privileges. Software licenses grant privileges, not rights. There's typically a sentence in licenses that says something along the lines of "if you don't agree with these terms, you may not use this software," i.e. you lose your privilege to it. When you choose to use GPL software, you agree to its terms, including the one that says that your own work has to be GPL as well. If those terms seem unreasonable to you, then don't accept them. Nobody's being forced to do anything here. Where in the world did you get this idea that developers have (or should have) the right to "do whatever they want?"
You can get around that problem by insisting that copyright over their contributed code falls to you when they submit it. That is what the FSF does with their code. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#AssignCopyright
Indeed you can. Two of my USB sticks have Ubuntu on them. 8.04 on one, and 9.04 on another.
Now just imagine once 3d printers become cheap enough for the common household... Manufacturers of small cheap trinkets had better be worried because their time is next.
Well, first they need to invent 3d scanners, and I haven't heard of those just yet. So them manafacturers are safe a little bit longer.