[Open Source] enables anyone to take a piece of work, and improve on it. However, this very fact makes it impractical for a business.
While I agree that the goal of Free Software and much Open Source software is the common good of the users, I disagree that this one aspect makes all Open Source compliant licenses impractical for business. In fact, the GPL defends the original producer quite well in this case. If a competitor steals my GPL'd product, adds a few features to it, and tries to resell it as an improved version, the GPL forces him to distribute his changes under the GPL too. Thus, if his additions really make a better product, I can easily incorporate them into my product, too. If I used the BSD license, for example, then my competitor could distribute modified binaries without source, and I'd be dead.
The fact that he can start with a large code base does reduce his barrier to entry, but unless his changes diverge from the direction I'm taking my GPL'd product or include other changes that I'm not willing to incorporate because of my target market, then I can just incorporate his work into my product. If so, then perhaps he's chasing a different market segment, which won't hurt my sales unless I'm completely wrong about who buys my product. In any case, I'm always free to grab his changes and put them in my product later. Finally, I can claim superior knowledge and understanding of the product since my company wrote it.
A good example of changes that were not merged and premitted a competing product would be the Mandrake Linux distro, which was originally Red Hat + KDE, recompiled from source with Pentium optimization. Red Hat was originally unwilling to incorporate KDE into its distro because of the Qt license. It also didn't compile with Pentium optimization, presumably to reach a broader audience. Thus, Mandrake could more easily create a distribution, and Red Hat did not incorporate Mandrake's improvements because Red Hat didn't need/want to make those changes in its distribution.
There is some fear that a competitor would resell your product for half the price since it doesn't have to pay the developers. (For example, cheapbytes.com) Of course, you have to educate your resellers and other users that putting you out of business this way will leave them with a dead product line. A former co-worker paid for his Qt license as soon as we determined that we were going to use it for a product. We could have continued to use the free versions during development, but his words at the time were something like, "It wouldn't help us if Troll Tech went out of business."
A vegan I know once put it this way, "You don't eat shit. You'd never think of eating shit. But it wouldn't bother you if there was just a little bit of shit in your soup broth, would it? How about if I fried that meal in a pan that had just been covered in shit? I wiped the pan once before cooking your meal..." Basically, you have to understand how utterly unthinkable eating anything animal-related becomes to a vegan. It's perhaps how you would feel about eating feces. That said, there are a lot of vegans who get a big kick out of being annoying. Those of us who don't like to be annoying often avoid eating anything or anywhere where we'd have to be that paranoid... especially in public. That is, we make sacrafices for your convenience and both your and our comfort. It's rather awkward asking these types of questions, especially at a table full of people who aren't vegetarians and really don't understand. Add to that the frustration of restaurant staff who sometimes lie rather than go to the trouble of answering simple questions such as, "Does this bread have milk in it?", and you get either a demanding, vocal vegan who is exacting in his questions or a vegan who refuses to order anything other than a plain salad at a non-vegetarian restaurant (and then smiles while co-workers harass him about never eating anything but salads). One thing that many people don't realize is that there are many vegetarians and vegans who feel the same way many of you feel. It's a personal choice, and they'd prefer not to discuss it. It's just that after a few dozen ignorant people harass you about your personal choices often at work or in other settings where you're trying to follow some sort of public or professional etiquette while under attack, you get tired of being reasonable. Sometimes you even start to hear attacks in questions that are simply curious. I suppose it's a feeling that a lot of geeks can relate to. If so, then they should lay off the veg*ns unless they're truly interested in vegetarianism or truly twisted and cruel. After all, at least geeks get good salaries after putting up with years of harassment. I haven't yet seen a want add for a strict vegan.;-)
I'm not surprised that they're vegetarian since Scott Adams is a vegetarian. Note that they aren't all strictly vegan. For example, the Mexican fajita contains Caseinate, which is a milk protein that is often added to soy-based cheese, presumably to make them more elastic and to give them a texture closer to true cheese.
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While I agree that the goal of Free Software and much Open Source software is the common good of the users, I disagree that this one aspect makes all Open Source compliant licenses impractical for business. In fact, the GPL defends the original producer quite well in this case. If a competitor steals my GPL'd product, adds a few features to it, and tries to resell it as an improved version, the GPL forces him to distribute his changes under the GPL too. Thus, if his additions really make a better product, I can easily incorporate them into my product, too. If I used the BSD license, for example, then my competitor could distribute modified binaries without source, and I'd be dead.
The fact that he can start with a large code base does reduce his barrier to entry, but unless his changes diverge from the direction I'm taking my GPL'd product or include other changes that I'm not willing to incorporate because of my target market, then I can just incorporate his work into my product. If so, then perhaps he's chasing a different market segment, which won't hurt my sales unless I'm completely wrong about who buys my product. In any case, I'm always free to grab his changes and put them in my product later. Finally, I can claim superior knowledge and understanding of the product since my company wrote it.
A good example of changes that were not merged and premitted a competing product would be the Mandrake Linux distro, which was originally Red Hat + KDE, recompiled from source with Pentium optimization. Red Hat was originally unwilling to incorporate KDE into its distro because of the Qt license. It also didn't compile with Pentium optimization, presumably to reach a broader audience. Thus, Mandrake could more easily create a distribution, and Red Hat did not incorporate Mandrake's improvements because Red Hat didn't need/want to make those changes in its distribution.
There is some fear that a competitor would resell your product for half the price since it doesn't have to pay the developers. (For example, cheapbytes.com) Of course, you have to educate your resellers and other users that putting you out of business this way will leave them with a dead product line. A former co-worker paid for his Qt license as soon as we determined that we were going to use it for a product. We could have continued to use the free versions during development, but his words at the time were something like, "It wouldn't help us if Troll Tech went out of business."
A vegan I know once put it this way, "You don't eat shit. You'd never think of eating shit. But it wouldn't bother you if there was just a little bit of shit in your soup broth, would it? How about if I fried that meal in a pan that had just been covered in shit? I wiped the pan once before cooking your meal..." Basically, you have to understand how utterly unthinkable eating anything animal-related becomes to a vegan. It's perhaps how you would feel about eating feces. That said, there are a lot of vegans who get a big kick out of being annoying. Those of us who don't like to be annoying often avoid eating anything or anywhere where we'd have to be that paranoid... especially in public. That is, we make sacrafices for your convenience and both your and our comfort. It's rather awkward asking these types of questions, especially at a table full of people who aren't vegetarians and really don't understand. Add to that the frustration of restaurant staff who sometimes lie rather than go to the trouble of answering simple questions such as, "Does this bread have milk in it?", and you get either a demanding, vocal vegan who is exacting in his questions or a vegan who refuses to order anything other than a plain salad at a non-vegetarian restaurant (and then smiles while co-workers harass him about never eating anything but salads). One thing that many people don't realize is that there are many vegetarians and vegans who feel the same way many of you feel. It's a personal choice, and they'd prefer not to discuss it. It's just that after a few dozen ignorant people harass you about your personal choices often at work or in other settings where you're trying to follow some sort of public or professional etiquette while under attack, you get tired of being reasonable. Sometimes you even start to hear attacks in questions that are simply curious. I suppose it's a feeling that a lot of geeks can relate to. If so, then they should lay off the veg*ns unless they're truly interested in vegetarianism or truly twisted and cruel. After all, at least geeks get good salaries after putting up with years of harassment. I haven't yet seen a want add for a strict vegan. ;-)
I'm not surprised that they're vegetarian since Scott Adams is a vegetarian. Note that they aren't all strictly vegan. For example, the Mexican fajita contains Caseinate, which is a milk protein that is often added to soy-based cheese, presumably to make them more elastic and to give them a texture closer to true cheese.