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Comment by dissident | Hacker News Reader

I'm trying to wrap my head around this comment. You're saying that GPL isn't restrictive enough to provide the security for businesses to open-source their work? GPL is very restrictive, more so than most other open-source licenses, which is why businesses usually release under Apache/MIT/BSD.

If a business is worried that their open-source software is going to backfire and feed the competition, they have no interest in open-sourcing their software in the first place, and no license restrictions will help them.

GPL's other effects (forcing businesses to open-source software they make modifications to, which are covered under the GPL) are good enough.

> I believe that every software owner deserves a copy of the source, but I don't believe that every software owner has the right to redistribute that program practically without limitation as the GPL allows.

I'm not sure you realize how unrealistic that artificial approach is becoming.

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>You're saying that GPL isn't restrictive enough to provide the security for businesses to open-source their work?

No, perhaps reading the comment I left in reply to another child will help clarify. I believe that the GPL has created a false equivocation that releasing source means you have to allow everyone to resell your product. I think that companies can release source to licensees only and I would like to see that practice enter general use. In short, I reject Stallman's "freedom 2" as an essential fundamental component in "moral" or "free" software.

> I think that companies can release source to licensees only and I would like to see that practice enter general use.

Companies already license out their source code to whoever they wish, and many already do what you suggest ("enterprise licensing"). Many prefer to open-source non-critical software, because the community can help maintain it.

I don't simply suggest "enterprise licensing" where a stipulation of a huge 5000-seat adoption is giving IT a copy of the source or whatever. I suggest a template like the GPL that can and will be used by many developers to include a copy of the source with every copy of the binary with the stipulation that the persons who do not own a valid license cannot legally use the software (in either source or binary form). This would allow the developer to continue to make money on software licensing fees, which possibility the GPL entirely upends in practice, and it would allow the end user to read and modify the code their system executes and share their changes with other end users.

Enterprise deals that include source usually do not allow the recipient to publish modifications to the code and come with a variety of other very serious restrictions. I am talking about something quite different.

Sounds to me like it comes with a raft of legal and practical troubles. Say company A has licensed a copy of this software and made some modifications. They cannot publish these modifications for general consumption (eg. on Github or similar), so it's not really obvious how anyone will ever know they have this potentially useful code. If some other company B somehow did find out that they did have it and come to A asking for them to share their code, A don't know that they're legally allowed to give it to B because they aren't the licensor.

Also, I disagree with your stance that the GPL "entirely upends" the possibility of making money off licensing software. Trolltech were (until they were bought by Nokia) an example to the contrary; Qt was dual-licensed under the QPL and GPL for years and they were obviously making money out of all the companies that didn't want to have to GPL their product.

Finally, it's not really clear to me that anyone really wants this model; there are companies (like iD) who are keen to open source at least some of their software. Many other companies are not interested in releasing any at all. It's not at all obvious to me that there is some sort of middle ground of companies who want to release their changes but only to other companies who have licensed the same software, thus forgoing the whole feel-good factor of open source, arguably much of the point of it and certainly the entire Free Software angle.

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