Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Making money

Author:Brett Glass
Posted:8/23/2000; 5:09:21 PM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:20025 (In response to 20013)
Prev/Next:20024 / 20026

I'd like you to clarify why you should have some control over the software that I develop.

Actually, I do not believe that I should "have control over" your software. When you publish source code, you still hold a copyright on it (unless you choose to put it in the public domain). If I create a derivative work, I control only my own additions and modifications. I don't control your work. Your work still stands and is still available to everyone. What's more, it is reasonable for you to ask that the work be recognized as yours. (This is called the "right of origination," and it's an inalienable right of authors under the Berne Convention.)

If you license your software in the way that the FSF advocates (that is, "under Version N or any future version of the GPL"), you actually give up control. The licensing is now in the hands of the FSF, because you don't know what the next version of the license will say. If you accept contributions from a third party under the GPL, or if someone spins off a development project under the GPL, you will likewise lose control. And if you contribute to a "GNU" project, you must sign over all rights to the work to the FSF. What's more, your name can be wiped from the source, so nobody knows you contributed it.

The BSD license is better in this regard. People can do whatever they want with the code, but they must give you credit.

As Brian Reid once quipped, "Scientists stand on one another's shoulders; programmers stand on one another's feet." Publishing your code under a license that allows your colleagues to reuse it in their products advances the state of the art. Publishing it under the GPL discriminates against them and at the same time destroys their markets.

If you release the code for public use, anyone should be able to use it for the purpose that benefits him or her most. To discriminate against programmers both undermines their livelihoods and deters them from advancing the state of the art by building on what you've done.

Why should I give you the right to make proprietary versions of my software if I don't want anyone to have that right?

If you wish to keep the code to yourself, that's all well and good; you are certainly within your rights to do that. But it is not ethical to release the code in a discriminatory way -- under a license whose purpose and effect is to hurt people. If you release the source to the world, it should be freely available for anyone to use for any purpose. In this way, your release of the code achieves the greatest possible benefit.

Why is it wrong for me to want the source for software that I wrote to remain freely availible?

So long as you (and everyone else who has also posted it -- there will probably be many sources) don't remove it from the Net, your work will be freely available. Others' additions to that work might or might not be, but that should be their choice. After all, the original is yours but the additions are theirs. We shouldn't begrudge them the chance to be rewarded for their hard work if they make a substantial improvement.

I don't ask proprietary developers to release their code -- I have no right to do that.

But that's exactly what the GPL does. It requires developers (commercial and non-commercial; as I've mentioned earlier, the word "proprietary" is misused in Stallman's rhetoric) to release their code if they combine it with freely available code.

It seems right to me, then, that you have no right to tell other people that it is unethical for them to GPL their software -- it is their software, after all, and they should be allowed to do as they please with it.

Just as it is unethical to do certain things with your fist (for example, walk up to a stranger and punch him or her in the nose), it is unethical to do some things with your code. Placing the GPL on software turns it into a weapon against commercial software developers. It is an act that hurts people who have done you no harm, and hence is a bad thing.

I could understand your complaint if you were talking about the GPL on a small library contaiminating your larger program, but if you add relatively minor enhancements to a larger program, I don't think you have much right to complain.

Most enhancements to software are incremental in nature. Being prohibited from selling a slightly improved version will prevent a developer from later developing a greatly improved one.

Also, you must remember that releasing software for free under any license drives the market value of its functionality to zero. (A rational consumer, given a choice between a product that costs nothing and an identical one that costs money, will choose the one that's free.) What's more, people will often "do without" the extra features of an enhanced product if they can get something that's good enough and costs nothing. Thus, there must be some significant value added in the enhanced product if the developer hopes to be paid for it, and even then he's got a tough row to hoe. If he or she is able to make a product that is sufficiently enhanced that people will pay for it, that developer has added a lot of value and deserves to be rewarded. I think you'll agree that it's spiteful to begrudge him or her that reward, especially since any money he or she gets will be a result of the improvements that he or she has made.

--Brett Glass

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:56:11 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.