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

Why? Because I want to.

Author:David Adams
Posted:8/25/2000; 12:16:10 PM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:20232 (In response to 20225)
Prev/Next:20231 / 20233

Now, let's suppose someone comes along and makes additions and changes to the program which are sufficient to convince users to pay $100 for it. Does he owe you anything? No, he doesn't -- because the market value of the program when he received it was zero.

Well, if the value of the GPLed code is zero, then why use it at all? Why not write your own version? And if you argue that it would take a lot of effort, then you are admitting that my freely available code does have value!

why kill his chance to be creative and bring his new technology to the world.

To me, this is a ridiculous argument. Are you claiming the right to do what you want with my code? Just because I let you read it? I don't have to give you that right. You don't inherently get that right by reading my code. Write your own code if you want to make money from it.

If you GPL the code, you are undermining him and precluding his efforts from seeing the light of day.

No! This other software developer has every right to write a different codebase that does the same thing as mine. Then he can make further improvements to his own code. If he chooses to build on my GPLed code, he's choosing to release any improvements he makes. That's part of the deal. As the original author of the code, I get to choose how my code is used, not you.

-dave

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