No, he's exactly right. The GPL allows you to use the software any way you like - hack it up, throw it away, turn it into a poem, whatever. However, by making a closed source program out of it, you are thereby restricting the rights of others to use it in the way that you were allowed to.
No, you aren't. If you take, say, a BSD licenced program and produce a derived closed source work then you are restricting the rights of others to copy your derived work.
You aren't, however, restricting the rights of others to use the original program in the way that you were allowed to.
Your argument is a totally bogus one---you can't restrict anyones rights to software which you don't own the copyright to. All you can do is decline to give other people as many rights to the code you have written.
I think what you are probably thinking of is the possibility of someone using an open-source program as the basis for a closed source 'embrace and extent' type attack. ie, just to make it a bit easier to produce a not quite compatible not free version and encouraging users to switch.
I see this argument quite a lot but I've yet to see anyone make any sense when they put it forward. Releasing a non-free derived work doesn't take any rights away from anyone.
There really is little difference between selling software and cauliflower
There/IS/ a significant difference between the two goods. It is well known and documented in the economics literature as the notion of 'non-rivalry' and, whilst not many people realise it, it is part of the entire basis for some views of free software.
A cauliflower is a rival good: if I eat part of it then there is less left for everyone else. A piece of software is non-rival: me using it doesn't reduce the amount left for you to use. All literature, patents, television, streetlighting etc. is nonrival to a degree.
Market economies are not capable of handling non-rival goods efficiently (using the usual economist's definition of efficiency: an economy is efficient if you can't rearrange things to make at least one person better off without making anyone else worse off).
Consider some software which sells for 100USD and costs 5 USD to duplicate. Someone, somewhere, is probably prepared to pay 30USD, but no more. If they were given the software for, say, 20 USD then THEY are better off, the software company is better of (they make 25 USD) and no-one is worse off.
The only way that this can happen in all such cases is if the software sells for 5USD: its cost of distribution. However, that fails to provide sufficient incentives for people to write the correct quantity of software in the first place. Consequently the result is again inefficient: not enough software is produced.
Free software attacks this latter problem directly. If free software could supply all software which has a social value greater than its cost of production (ie, the value of people's given up leisure time) then the problem would be solved completely. I don't see this as likely and, therefore, believe that commercial software will always have a place even if it is never ideal. After all without the incentives in place there is no flow of information back to the developers about how needed particular software there is.
Personally, I think its sad to see so many free software advocates/non-advocates completely ignoring over a century of economic literature... [sigh]
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No, you aren't. If you take, say, a BSD licenced program and produce a derived closed source work then you are restricting the rights of others to copy your derived work.
You aren't, however, restricting the rights of others to use the original program in the way that you were allowed to.
Your argument is a totally bogus one---you can't restrict anyones rights to software which you don't own the copyright to. All you can do is decline to give other people as many rights to the code you have written.
I think what you are probably thinking of is the possibility of someone using an open-source program as the basis for a closed source 'embrace and extent' type attack. ie, just to make it a bit easier to produce a not quite compatible not free version and encouraging users to switch.
I see this argument quite a lot but I've yet to see anyone make any sense when they put it forward. Releasing a non-free derived work doesn't take any rights away from anyone.
There /IS/ a significant difference between the two goods. It is well known and documented in the economics literature as the notion of 'non-rivalry' and, whilst not many people realise it, it is part of the entire basis for some views of free software.
A cauliflower is a rival good: if I eat part of it then there is less left for everyone else. A piece of software is non-rival: me using it doesn't reduce the amount left for you to use. All literature, patents, television, streetlighting etc. is nonrival to a degree.
Market economies are not capable of handling non-rival goods efficiently (using the usual economist's definition of efficiency: an economy is efficient if you can't rearrange things to make at least one person better off without making anyone else worse off).
Consider some software which sells for 100USD and costs 5 USD to duplicate. Someone, somewhere, is probably prepared to pay 30USD, but no more. If they were given the software for, say, 20 USD then THEY are better off, the software company is better of (they make 25 USD) and no-one is worse off.
The only way that this can happen in all such cases is if the software sells for 5USD: its cost of distribution. However, that fails to provide sufficient incentives for people to write the correct quantity of software in the first place. Consequently the result is again inefficient: not enough software is produced.
Free software attacks this latter problem directly. If free software could supply all software which has a social value greater than its cost of production (ie, the value of people's given up leisure time) then the problem would be solved completely. I don't see this as likely and, therefore, believe that commercial software will always have a place even if it is never ideal. After all without the incentives in place there is no flow of information back to the developers about how needed particular software there is.
Personally, I think its sad to see so many free software advocates/non-advocates completely ignoring over a century of economic literature... [sigh]