It's nice for FreeBSD users that Quake, VMWare, StarOffice, and other products published as native binaries for Linux can run on the Linux ABI, but it may be bad for the platform in the long term. Vendors will simply say, "We don't need to support FreeBSD; just run the Linux version!" Such an approach would consign FreeBSD to being Linux's ugly stepsister -- potentially forever.
This has happened to other platforms. The Windows emulation in OS/2 virtually eliminated development of native OS/2 applications.
Another example: FreeBSD has a larger installed base than Solaris, and yet there are more native ports to Solaris than to FreeBSD. FreeBSD users should be concerned that this is a sign that the phenomenon mentioned above is starting to happen.
My take: FreeBSD users will have to bombard manufacturers with requests for native ports to overcome the negative effects of emulation.
Stallman, by his own account, only consults for "a few days a year." That's too little time to get much accomplished for a client. And FSF's high-priced "products" are either copies of what one can download elsewhere for free or "souvenir" items such as T-shirts.
Hiring Stallman, or buying an FSF product, is a thinly veiled way of "donating" to his organization. While Stallman is very uncomfortable with money, he does want the FSF -- his "weapon" against commercial software -- to be well armed.
Yes, money itself is capital. And it is not consumed when it is spent; it is passed from hand to hand.
Intellectual property is, most certainly, capital -- and, in fact, is the coin of the realm in the Internet Age. Lobbying to abolish it, as Stallman does, is akin to lobbying for the abolishment of money. Which Stallman, who does not like to so much as touch money, may find desirable. However, most of the rest of us need it to eat.
--Brett
P.S. -- I'd be interested in hearing the expansion of the acronym "LART."
Stallman, in his rhetoric, attempts to redefine the words "commercial" and "proprietary" for his own purposes.
GPLed software cannot be "commercial" because a license to use it cannot be sold. Copies of it are sold, but all that's being sold is the media -- not the software.
Fortunately, the GPL's "copyleft" provisions, which require derived works to be licensed to all comers under the GPL, are unenforceable because they embody a "meta-contract" -- a contract to make a contract. Thus, the GPL's efforts to "capture" BSD-licensed code and prevent its commercial reuse will fail. Thank Heaven.
Those who see the entire world in terms of open source tend to forget: there is a necessary synergism between open source and commercial softare.
The relationship -- at least up to the time when the GPL was created -- has always been similar to that between pure research and engineering. Researchers do their work in a rarefied, somewhat artificial environment where the sharing of information -- via publishing -- brings the maximum reward. The scientists in this environment know full well that they are foregoing some monetary rewards for their work, but are generally quite happy to do so -- since in return, they are allowed to live and work in an incredibly rich academic "playground."
Once scientists publish their results, engineers who produce commercial (or, as Stallman calls them, "proprietary") products may use it to develop practical solutions for the real world. These engineers, being outside the research "bubble," world, do not reveal everything they build upon the scientists' work (though they may reveal some of it, in exchange for a temporary monopoly, via patents). Why? Because in their world, rewards arise from the unique value that they add to their products -- value that their competitors cannot duplicate.
Richard Stallman worked in a research facility: the MIT AI Lab. However, like many hackers who have trouble dealing with the "real world," he failed to understand the symbiotic relationship between the artificial, rarified environment inside the research "bubble" and the world at large. What's more, he was jealous of his peers who left the research environment to join companies which made use of what had been done in the AI Lab. (In Stallman's "GNU Manifesto," he advocates that high programmer salaries be "banned" to prevent programmers from leaving academia.)
Now, the truth is that not many of these people actually achieved great wealth. Symbolics -- the AI Lab spinoff whose creation enraged Stallman and led directly to the creation of the GPL -- failed miserably. But Stallman, in his rage, took it as a given that all of them were going to make tons of money. This is reflected in Stallman's writings, none of which recognize the fact that most commercial software companies fail.
Feeling that he himself could never leave the research environment (he was so inured to it that he literally lived on a couch in the lab), Stallman sought -- out of spite -- to "queer the deal," as it were, between the two worlds. This was the purpose of the GPL: to prohibit reuse of work done in a research or research-like environment -- where knowledge is shared openly and the rewards are largely non-monetary -- to the commercial sector.
What Stallman failed to recognize, however, is that the academic research environment is not self-sustaining. In fact, it is artificially created (and heavily funded) by government and by commercial interests in the hope that all of society can share and use the results. And, yes, some of us will use those results for profit. But that's a good thing -- it creates money which industry willingly feeds back into the research environment to generate more knowledge. And commercial spinoffs from publicly funded projects such as the Space Shuttle have improved all of our lives.
The same is true of projects which make use of freely reusable (that is, non-GPLed) open source software. I and my team can spend less time re-inventing the wheel, and more time solving tough, new problems, if we can stand on other programmers' shoulders -- rather than, as Brian Reid once said, on their feet. But, like many companies that build on publicly available knowledge, we would not be able to consider doing a browser unless we can at least break even on our efforts. And this means making our product commercial. Given the limited market for our work, we do not expect to be able to use the "give away the source/profit from support" business model. The market simply isn't large enough. Without closed source, we couldn't contemplate the project at all.
In short, the greatest benefit to everyone -- in this case -- will arise from a product which is, at least initially, closed source.
Again, there is a symbiosis and a balance here. Giving some of one's work away is fine. But mandating that everyone give everything away destroys the relationship between the two worlds by attempting to impose the artificial rules of one upon the other. Instead, we must recognize, support, and sustain the very useful and positive relationship between the two worlds, and allow them to benefit from one another.
The group of users who have embraced the GPL and Richard Stallman's agenda contains many people who are inherently hostile to commercial software development projects such as Opera. One can see that hostility in many messages here. While I wish Opera the best of luck on the Linux platform, I fear that it may be frequently pirated and/or shunned by many in that group.
However, there is a related group which has a lower profile but may actually generate more income -- and comprise a more loyal user base -- for Opera. These are the users of the open source BSD UNIX operating systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Unlike the GPL "zealots," the BSD community has almost universal respect for commercial software developers who do good work, and will support them and pay for their software.
Now that the release of a Linux port is imminent, I hope that the development team will take the time to ensure that the browser runs under the BSDs and that it is available as native binaries for them. (The porting effort should be negligible, since the APIs are so similar and the GUI is identical.) Opera would be most welcome in this space, and I'll gladly volunteer to help and promote efforts to bring it there.
Another advantage of OpenBSD for Corel would be portability. Corel has expressed interest in entering the "thin client" market. OpenBSD, like NetBSD, is extremely portable. Its roots lie in OpenBSD, the world's most portable OS, and it already runs on a wide range of CPUs, including big-endian, little-endian, RISC and CISC processors. But unlike Linux, it can be customized without requiring Corel to reveal exactly how it builds its hardware. This allows Corel to preserve the unique value of its hardware designs.
Yet another plus of OpenBSD for Corel would be the value inherent in the OS's emphasis on security. Corel, because it's in Canada, can export a secure OS to the world -- giving it an advantage over any American company (including Microsoft). And being able to demonstrate that one's OS is far more secure than Windows NT would likewise be a tremendous marketing point.
Finally, because OpenBSD has Linux emulation, Corel can cross-develop for Linux directly on the OpenBSD platform. If the code runs on the emulation, it will run well under Linux. Cross-development for FreeBSD would likewise be a snap.
It's ironic that Corel has, up to this point, overlooked a fantastic opportunity right in its own backyard! But fortunately, the animus of the GPL and its supporters toward private business has given Corel a "wake-up call." Now's the time for Corel to act.
The posting to which I responded did not make a rational argument; it made unsupported, pontifical statements and judgments. There is no point in arguing with such pronouncements. However, there is some value in throwing them into sharp relief via satire.
Yep, just as I thought. Microsoft is a business. You are in business. Therefore, you are Microsoft.
All business is evil; making money from one's creative work is evil; failing to give away one's entire output for free is evil.
Thank Heaven for the GPL. One line of my code in your application, and I have the God-given right to prevent you from making any money off of your evil scheme.
I'm really beginning to see the light here. Let's monkey-wrench all of those evil businesses with the GPL. They'll never make a dime! They'll go out of business! They'll die like the bastards they are!
Let's get back to the main topic a bit here. What should Corel do about all of this?
Personally, if I were Corel, I would quickly move Corel Office, CorelDraw, and future open source development efforts to OpenBSD.
This would have the following advantages over the current situation:
1. Questions regarding the GPL would be moot, as OpenBSD -- of all of the open source UNIX-like operating systems -- uses the least GPLed code (and this only for the toolchain).
2. Corel would no longer be subject to attack by GPL "zealots."
3. Corel still be able to support versions of its applications for Linux, because the APIs of OpenBSD and Linux are very similar. Porting would amount to little more than a recompilation -- and possibly minor changes in the locations of a few files. (These could be handled by very simple logic in the installation programs for the applications.)
4. Because OpenBSD is a Canadian product, Corel need not worry about the possibility that US export restrictions would prevent it from obtaining and/or redistributing parts of the OS that used encryption.
5. Corel is often accused of shipping software which is not fully debugged and/or which crashes frequently. However, OpenBSD's code has been -- and continues to be -- fastidiously audited and maintained, and will raise the perception of Corel's code quality as a whole. The OpenBSD developers are fanatical about code correctness and will fix bugs that are pointed out to them promptly. They will also welcome the bug reports.
6. There are no commercial distributions of OpenBSD, whereas there are dozens of Linux distributions. Corel, as a distributor of OpenBSD, would be alone in its niche with a unique and well-differentiated product. What's more, it could add unique enhancements -- e.g. binary hardware drivers -- without being forced to give them away.
7. OpenBSD is reknowned for its security, but is a bit less user-friendly than the other BSDs. Corel, by bringing an office suite and other applications to the table, could turn this around, creating a symbiotic relationship between itself and the OS project.
8. While Theo DeRaadt, the leader of the OpenBSD project, is noted for his cantankerousness, Corel always has the option of creating its own distinct fork of the OS. However, the ability to fork is actually a deterrent to forking, since both sides would realize that it would be a duplication of effort. So, the BSD license would encourage Corel and the OpenBSD team to cooperate for their mutual benefit.
9. The transition could be done quickly and painlessly due to the similarities between the OSes and their APIs. Corel would not see an interruption in its revenue stream as a result.
For all of these reasons, the best course of action for Corel is to recognize that it almost got it right, but needs to tweak its strategy a bit to maximize its effectiveness. OpenBSD is the way to go for Corel, and I believe that it should move that way before the next release.
I've already quoted Richard once on this topic, but since it appears that you haven't followed the thread, and/or insist on being spoon-fed the information, I will do so again.
For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.
Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting work for a lot of money.
What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned.
Nothing -- and I will not do so. To contribute to Linux (I find it hard to believe that Stallman has managed to convince people to put the name of the organization he controls in front of it) would be to contribute to the base of GPLed software. This, in turn, would reinforce Stallman's intentionally spiteful and destructive agenda.
The GPL is Richard Stallman's attempt to transform open source software into software which is not open to people he does not like -- and to use it as a weapon against them.
I believe in making positive contributions. When I do publish open source, it is under the BSD license, not under the GPL's "poison pill" license.
The goal of the FSF and the GPL is to promote innovation in the software industry by removing proprietary obstacles.
Unfortunately, as stated in the GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman and the FSF consider such things as good salaries for programmers to be "obstacles" that must be removed. Stallman advocates "banning" them.
After reading your posting above, I have seen the light. All business is Necessarily Evil Incarnate. There is no such thing as a responsible or caring business, business owner, or entrepreneur. All software vendors everywhere, and all programmers who don't embrace the GPL and give away all of their work, are clearly only out to exploit users. Programming is an evil occupation and must be stomped out. Let's ban high salaries for programmers and destroy their jobs!
Your sweeping generalizations are unfair. Most programmers and software companies -- myself included -- take great pains to do good work. On the other hand, under the GPL, there's a TOTAL disclaimer of ALL liability. So much for "lemon laws!"
Frankly, I'd favor such laws so long as they applied to the cash-rich FSF.
He goes farther. Stallman suggests banning high pay for programmers so as to encourage them to stay in low-paying jobs -- e.g. in academia. He says:
For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.
Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting work for a lot of money.
What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned.
As you observe, the GPL says -- in effect -- "Some uses are more allowed than others." And programmers, in particular, get the short end of the stick: the uses from which they could benefit most are prohibited unless they give away the farm.
Stallman's destructive agenda is very thinly veiled indeed. Read the "GNU Manifesto," in which Stallman openly claims that if he achieves his goals programmers will be no more useful than someone who stands on a street corner and makes funny faces.
People have made the very good point that the GPL helps prevent the forking we've seen with Unix. The lack of restrictions on the BSD license lead to the fragmentation of BSD into tens of free and commercial OSes, all mutually incompatible with each other.
Actually, contrary to Raymond's "Halloween document," there hasn't been a new fork of the BSDs in several years. However, there are now a couple of dozen forks of Linux, and more are appearing all the time.
The truth is that there is absolutely nothing about the GPL which does anything to prevent forking. However, the culture of the various BSD projects -- in particular, their greater willingness to share code -- has done a great deal to discourage forking. Hence, the fragmentation of Linux into many incompatible distributions.
Stallman actually says this in an essay called "What is Copyleft." Until January 1999, the version of the essay posted on the FSF site said the following:
People who write improvements in free software often work for companies or universities that would do almost anything to get money. A programmer may want to contribute her changes to the community, but her employer may 'see green' and insist on turning the changes into a commercial product.
When we explain to the employer that it is illegal to distribute the improved version except as free software, the employer usually decides to release it as free software rather than throw it away.
Interestingly, in a case of almost Orwellian revisionism, Stallman removed the bit about "seeing green" from the version of the essay that's now published at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html . He did this after I cited it on a public mailing list as an example of his strongly anti-business agenda. However, the Web remembers: mirrors of the original text may be found throughout the Internet. The revised essay still encourages programmers to incorporate GPLed code in their work as a way of "monkey wrenching" private enterprise, but it is now more subtle.
It's also worth noting that, shortly thereafter, Stallman changed the word "commercial" (used in the original version) to "proprietary." The shift to the word "proprietary," which has more negative connotations, cleared the way for another rhetorical device: the FSF's claim that Linux can be "commercial."
I believe that this may not be the only place on the site where Richard has honed his rhetoric to cloak his animus against businesses of all kinds.
Slashdot Mirror
This has happened to other platforms. The Windows emulation in OS/2 virtually eliminated development of native OS/2 applications.
Another example: FreeBSD has a larger installed base than Solaris, and yet there are more native ports to Solaris than to FreeBSD. FreeBSD users should be concerned that this is a sign that the phenomenon mentioned above is starting to happen.
My take: FreeBSD users will have to bombard manufacturers with requests for native ports to overcome the negative effects of emulation.
--Brett Glass
Hiring Stallman, or buying an FSF product, is a thinly veiled way of "donating" to his organization. While Stallman is very uncomfortable with money, he does want the FSF -- his "weapon" against commercial software -- to be well armed.
--Brett Glass
Intellectual property is, most certainly, capital -- and, in fact, is the coin of the realm in the Internet Age. Lobbying to abolish it, as Stallman does, is akin to lobbying for the abolishment of money. Which Stallman, who does not like to so much as touch money, may find desirable. However, most of the rest of us need it to eat.
--Brett
P.S. -- I'd be interested in hearing the expansion of the acronym "LART."
GPLed software cannot be "commercial" because a license to use it cannot be sold. Copies of it are sold, but all that's being sold is the media -- not the software.
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
The relationship -- at least up to the time when the GPL was created -- has always been similar to that between pure research and engineering. Researchers do their work in a rarefied, somewhat artificial environment where the sharing of information -- via publishing -- brings the maximum reward. The scientists in this environment know full well that they are foregoing some monetary rewards for their work, but are generally quite happy to do so -- since in return, they are allowed to live and work in an incredibly rich academic "playground."
Once scientists publish their results, engineers who produce commercial (or, as Stallman calls them, "proprietary") products may use it to develop practical solutions for the real world. These engineers, being outside the research "bubble," world, do not reveal everything they build upon the scientists' work (though they may reveal some of it, in exchange for a temporary monopoly, via patents). Why? Because in their world, rewards arise from the unique value that they add to their products -- value that their competitors cannot duplicate.
Richard Stallman worked in a research facility: the MIT AI Lab. However, like many hackers who have trouble dealing with the "real world," he failed to understand the symbiotic relationship between the artificial, rarified environment inside the research "bubble" and the world at large. What's more, he was jealous of his peers who left the research environment to join companies which made use of what had been done in the AI Lab. (In Stallman's "GNU Manifesto," he advocates that high programmer salaries be "banned" to prevent programmers from leaving academia.)
Now, the truth is that not many of these people actually achieved great wealth. Symbolics -- the AI Lab spinoff whose creation enraged Stallman and led directly to the creation of the GPL -- failed miserably. But Stallman, in his rage, took it as a given that all of them were going to make tons of money. This is reflected in Stallman's writings, none of which recognize the fact that most commercial software companies fail.
Feeling that he himself could never leave the research environment (he was so inured to it that he literally lived on a couch in the lab), Stallman sought -- out of spite -- to "queer the deal," as it were, between the two worlds. This was the purpose of the GPL: to prohibit reuse of work done in a research or research-like environment -- where knowledge is shared openly and the rewards are largely non-monetary -- to the commercial sector.
What Stallman failed to recognize, however, is that the academic research environment is not self-sustaining. In fact, it is artificially created (and heavily funded) by government and by commercial interests in the hope that all of society can share and use the results. And, yes, some of us will use those results for profit. But that's a good thing -- it creates money which industry willingly feeds back into the research environment to generate more knowledge. And commercial spinoffs from publicly funded projects such as the Space Shuttle have improved all of our lives.
The same is true of projects which make use of freely reusable (that is, non-GPLed) open source software. I and my team can spend less time re-inventing the wheel, and more time solving tough, new problems, if we can stand on other programmers' shoulders -- rather than, as Brian Reid once said, on their feet. But, like many companies that build on publicly available knowledge, we would not be able to consider doing a browser unless we can at least break even on our efforts. And this means making our product commercial. Given the limited market for our work, we do not expect to be able to use the "give away the source/profit from support" business model. The market simply isn't large enough. Without closed source, we couldn't contemplate the project at all.
In short, the greatest benefit to everyone -- in this case -- will arise from a product which is, at least initially, closed source.
Again, there is a symbiosis and a balance here. Giving some of one's work away is fine. But mandating that everyone give everything away destroys the relationship between the two worlds by attempting to impose the artificial rules of one upon the other. Instead, we must recognize, support, and sustain the very useful and positive relationship between the two worlds, and allow them to benefit from one another.
--Brett Glass
Information, on the other hand, is capital, because it can be reused again and again.
Stallman's goal is to force people to give up their intellectual capital.
--Brett Glass
However, there is a related group which has a lower profile but may actually generate more income -- and comprise a more loyal user base -- for Opera. These are the users of the open source BSD UNIX operating systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Unlike the GPL "zealots," the BSD community has almost universal respect for commercial software developers who do good work, and will support them and pay for their software.
Now that the release of a Linux port is imminent, I hope that the development team will take the time to ensure that the browser runs under the BSDs and that it is available as native binaries for them. (The porting effort should be negligible, since the APIs are so similar and the GUI is identical.) Opera would be most welcome in this space, and I'll gladly volunteer to help and promote efforts to bring it there.
--Brett Glass
Oops. I should have said, above, that OpenBSD's roots lie in NetBSD -- the world's most portable OS.
Yet another plus of OpenBSD for Corel would be the value inherent in the OS's emphasis on security. Corel, because it's in Canada, can export a secure OS to the world -- giving it an advantage over any American company (including Microsoft). And being able to demonstrate that one's OS is far more secure than Windows NT would likewise be a tremendous marketing point.
Finally, because OpenBSD has Linux emulation, Corel can cross-develop for Linux directly on the OpenBSD platform. If the code runs on the emulation, it will run well under Linux. Cross-development for FreeBSD would likewise be a snap.
It's ironic that Corel has, up to this point, overlooked a fantastic opportunity right in its own backyard! But fortunately, the animus of the GPL and its supporters toward private business has given Corel a "wake-up call." Now's the time for Corel to act.
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
All business is evil; making money from one's creative work is evil; failing to give away one's entire output for free is evil.
Thank Heaven for the GPL. One line of my code in your application, and I have the God-given right to prevent you from making any money off of your evil scheme.
I'm really beginning to see the light here. Let's monkey-wrench all of those evil businesses with the GPL. They'll never make a dime! They'll go out of business! They'll die like the bastards they are!
Sure.
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
Personally, if I were Corel, I would quickly move Corel Office, CorelDraw, and future open source development efforts to OpenBSD.
This would have the following advantages over the current situation:
1. Questions regarding the GPL would be moot, as OpenBSD -- of all of the open source UNIX-like operating systems -- uses the least GPLed code (and this only for the toolchain).
2. Corel would no longer be subject to attack by GPL "zealots."
3. Corel still be able to support versions of its applications for Linux, because the APIs of OpenBSD and Linux are very similar. Porting would amount to little more than a recompilation -- and possibly minor changes in the locations of a few files. (These could be handled by very simple logic in the installation programs for the applications.)
4. Because OpenBSD is a Canadian product, Corel need not worry about the possibility that US export restrictions would prevent it from obtaining and/or redistributing parts of the OS that used encryption.
5. Corel is often accused of shipping software which is not fully debugged and/or which crashes frequently. However, OpenBSD's code has been -- and continues to be -- fastidiously audited and maintained, and will raise the perception of Corel's code quality as a whole. The OpenBSD developers are fanatical about code correctness and will fix bugs that are pointed out to them promptly. They will also welcome the bug reports.
6. There are no commercial distributions of OpenBSD, whereas there are dozens of Linux distributions. Corel, as a distributor of OpenBSD, would be alone in its niche with a unique and well-differentiated product. What's more, it could add unique enhancements -- e.g. binary hardware drivers -- without being forced to give them away.
7. OpenBSD is reknowned for its security, but is a bit less user-friendly than the other BSDs. Corel, by bringing an office suite and other applications to the table, could turn this around, creating a symbiotic relationship between itself and the OS project.
8. While Theo DeRaadt, the leader of the OpenBSD project, is noted for his cantankerousness, Corel always has the option of creating its own distinct fork of the OS. However, the ability to fork is actually a deterrent to forking, since both sides would realize that it would be a duplication of effort. So, the BSD license would encourage Corel and the OpenBSD team to cooperate for their mutual benefit.
9. The transition could be done quickly and painlessly due to the similarities between the OSes and their APIs. Corel would not see an interruption in its revenue stream as a result.
For all of these reasons, the best course of action for Corel is to recognize that it almost got it right, but needs to tweak its strategy a bit to maximize its effectiveness. OpenBSD is the way to go for Corel, and I believe that it should move that way before the next release.
--Brett Glass
From Stallman's "GNU Manifesto," at http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html:
--Brett Glass
Nothing -- and I will not do so. To contribute to Linux (I find it hard to believe that Stallman has managed to convince people to put the name of the organization he controls in front of it) would be to contribute to the base of GPLed software. This, in turn, would reinforce Stallman's intentionally spiteful and destructive agenda.
The GPL is Richard Stallman's attempt to transform open source software into software which is not open to people he does not like -- and to use it as a weapon against them.
I believe in making positive contributions. When I do publish open source, it is under the BSD license, not under the GPL's "poison pill" license.
--Brett GLass
Unfortunately, as stated in the GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman and the FSF consider such things as good salaries for programmers to be "obstacles" that must be removed. Stallman advocates "banning" them.
--Brett
Yeah, right!
--Brett Glass
Frankly, I'd favor such laws so long as they applied to the cash-rich FSF.
--Brett Glass
For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.
Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting work for a lot of money.
What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned.
--Brett Glass
--Brett
--Brett Glass
Actually, contrary to Raymond's "Halloween document," there hasn't been a new fork of the BSDs in several years. However, there are now a couple of dozen forks of Linux, and more are appearing all the time.
The truth is that there is absolutely nothing about the GPL which does anything to prevent forking. However, the culture of the various BSD projects -- in particular, their greater willingness to share code -- has done a great deal to discourage forking. Hence, the fragmentation of Linux into many incompatible distributions.
--Brett Glass
Sorry, but I don't have time for that. Bye.
People who write improvements in free software often work for companies or universities that would do almost anything to get money. A programmer may want to contribute her changes to the community, but her employer may 'see green' and insist on turning the changes into a commercial product.
When we explain to the employer that it is illegal to distribute the improved version except as free software, the employer usually decides to release it as free software rather than throw it away.
Interestingly, in a case of almost Orwellian revisionism, Stallman removed the bit about "seeing green" from the version of the essay that's now published at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html . He did this after I cited it on a public mailing list as an example of his strongly anti-business agenda. However, the Web remembers: mirrors of the original text may be found throughout the Internet. The revised essay still encourages programmers to incorporate GPLed code in their work as a way of "monkey wrenching" private enterprise, but it is now more subtle.
It's also worth noting that, shortly thereafter, Stallman changed the word "commercial" (used in the original version) to "proprietary." The shift to the word "proprietary," which has more negative connotations, cleared the way for another rhetorical device: the FSF's claim that Linux can be "commercial."
I believe that this may not be the only place on the site where Richard has honed his rhetoric to cloak his animus against businesses of all kinds.
--Brett Glass