> Maxim, why on earth would you suggest doing such a thing?
OK, Arlie, looks like I must respond to you, though there is some minor risk we
will have yet another flame war on GPL. 
I consider GPL license as a virus which does lots of harm to commercial
software development.
I consider Stallman’s intent in inventing such stuff as a count-down bomb under
the software development business. There are already some companies went out of
business due to unfair competition with GPLed stuff.
I also consider picking up the stuff laying on the street and making money off
it - an absolutely normal and honest deed.
I also consider nobody does any harm to GPL people by starting the commercial
software off it.
What is their interest in prohibiting commercial software based on their code?
I can see no honest and decent interests there, except the aggressive and
destructive ones - “we will do the product for free to bring down your
business, and you will not even be able of defending yourself by using the law
on unfair competition”.
I’m the defender of the “positive law” idea. The legislation must be more based
on “being useful” and “balance of interests” principles, not on some sacred
cows.
With the “positive law” principle, GPL copyright defenders would be rejected at
court, since they will have no interest in this, not interest recognizeable by
the positive law.
Otherwise, the GPL people will continue to undermine the software development,
which will cause suffering to rather many people, on this very forum included.
If GPL people want to do something good for free due to moral obligations -
then issue the public domain software. Why introduce problems for others,
having no revenue off it? This is called “predatory business practice”
(according to Judge Jackson’s ruling on Microsoft’s case). A kind of unfair
competition.
Public domain software is like “res publicae”, it cannot be the subject of any
property-related rights. It is beyound the business at all - like trees,
forests, rivers and so on. Like the fine arts classics, if 50 years passed
after the death of the author. The good side of PD stuff is that it, being not
a business entity, does not undermine any business branch. It is not a
competitor, it is just for everybody’s pleasure, use (money-making included)
and benefit.
Nevertheless, we have GPL and the whole “movement” of aggressive nihilists.
Note that they do not want to issue the software for public domain! they insist
on GPL. From this I can only conclude that their real purpose is to undermine
the software development business due to their irrational “hatred to large
corporations” (which they are proud of - note, they are proud of hatred!), and
all their beautiful wording on improving the society and such - is just a
rationalization of this aggression.
Worse so. GPL software is mainly system-level. Everybody knows how tight is the
market of the system-level software. The “teenage smarties” (and the
50-years-old people who are still teenage smarties psychologically) of GPL have
the intellect necessary to do this job. Nevertheless, they cannot make money
off it. They did not prove that they really cost any money. So what? They give
away products for free, thus devaluing the work of their senior colleagues who
live off their jobs. Undermining the more successful people - instead of trying
to be one of them. Pathetic.
People here on this forum will suffer from GPL stuff first. People writing
Visual Basic+SQL apps - will not. GPL is to blame in undermining the market for
elite software developers, thus making this business - the business requiring
great intellectual powers - duller, lesser profitable and lesser respectful
(due to accent moved to simpler and duller kinds of development, which are also
lesser paid due to being lesser “requiring” and more open for wide masses).
This is devaluation of intellect after all.
It’s very bad that the modern Western and near-Western society has legally
defined mechanisms which protect such things.
One last moment of GPL. According to what I know, if the American uni is
governementally funded - then the law declares any results of the uni’s work to
be public domain, and not the uni’s IP (as it was with FreeBSD, AFAIK). The
thing is that the taxpayers have already paid for this work. If you want to
have IP on a product - then maintain your employees financially from your own
pocket, all is simple.
Also according to what I know, anything done by the employee in the working
time and/or using the employer’s equipment, is the property of the employer. If
you want to do something belonging to you - then work in spare time on your own
equipment, all is simple. Do your own investments.
Now - am I wrong that Stallman, while working on GCC, was a MIT’s employee? Or
maybe he wrote the whole compiler in his spare time? or MIT is not
governementally funded?
Am I wrong that Linux’s IP stack was written by Alan Cox in the University of
Wales? Was Alan an employee here? was the IP stack his assigned task as an
employee? was it done as a free research work permitted and sponsored by the
uni bosses? is the University of Wales - the governementally funded
institution? or maybe British laws differ from American this greatly?
Same question on ext2, IIRC written in the Pascal’s University in Paris.
The key idea of my reasoning is the attempt to analyze - who pays money to GPL
people? Usually the scientific insititutions. Then why the IP rights on the
software must belong to some FSF fund, and not to the employers of its authors
or to taxpayers? The role of science is to help commerce and business, not
undermine it.
Funny picture. The system-level developers pay taxes to the governement, which
are spent by the governement to fund the unis, and the uni’s employees (funded
off the developer’s taxes) write the software which undermines the development
business.
Allowing the commercial reuse of GPLed code will result in better shape of IT
business, more taxes to the governement, more money to maintain the same unis
and to hire more people there to do more GPLed stuff!
The root case here is IMHO trying to apply scientific notions to business
world. In science, everything is open. Note - even open for money-making. In
business world, things are closed to the money-making of others (patents etc),
but they are not for free anyway, and fed their makers. Not like science, which
cannot feed and requires the third-party feeder.
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com