On Wednesday 23 October 2002 12:21, Ben Ostrowsky wrote:
> http://newsvac.newsforge.com/newsvac/02/10/23/1247236.shtml?tid=4
>
> Tampa rep Jim Davis (D) co-signed a letter to colleagues which
> mistakenly slams the GPL as being anti-industry. Would any constituents
> care to make an appointment with his office? We've got an "in" here,
> folks.
Read closer. They're saying that GPL licensing government funded SECURITY code
will destroy closed-source abilities to use the code. They're right, to a
point.
If the code is going to be sold IN A MODIFIED FORM by commercial companies, or
as a component of their commercial software package (libraries that aren't
LGPLed), they have to contribute the code back to the community.
>From a commercial perspective, this relegates that code to a "dirty place"
that they can't touch for fear of contaminating their "clean room" source
code that is their IP life-blood. So, rather than *understand* and work with
GPL, they would rather avoid it altogether.
Alternatively, they could BSD style license the code and it would still be
OpenSource friendly while still being valuable to industry that uses it to
improve their own products without concern.
It's an education issue really. Do you try and educate all corporations how
development with GPL/LGPL'ed code is not only generally painless, but often
beneficial to everyone involved? Or do you just give up and throw the source
out there for EVERYONE to use without a guarantee that those who use it will
publically contribute their changes back to the community as a whole?
So, yeah, it makes me mad, hell RMS would be furious, but I can understand
their argument to a point.
- Ian C. Blenke <icblenke@nks.net> <ian@blenke.com> http://ian.blenke.com
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