Given what happened in the financial markets as they were deregulated I am extremely suspicious of the notion that removing the constraints of Copy Left will actually be positive in the long run. I have no doubt that it will help companies like Apple but I don't see the benefit for the wider community of developers.
If someone wanted to be a dick about it they could release modified GPL code as one big diff and publish it on some obscure webpage only their customers have access to. Instead we see more and more companies and individuals becoming friendly open source citizens. Perhaps some because the GPL mandates it but I would like to think mainly because they feel it's right thing to do—copyleft or not.
Your statement is a shining example of the fallacy fallacy though... just because one interpretation of what I said on a detail of it is incorrect, that in no way invalidates my statement nor the existence of vocal people like those I describe.
That seems pretty in step with the GPL.
More likely, a libertarian in the contemprary American sense of the term, though the labor theory of property is at least Lockean in vintage.
I think that there is a powerful value in sharing, however. On a physical level, the old-fashioned term is "being a good neighbor". The GPL enforces sharing contractually. There's also a powerful value in being able to fix things that you use. And the GPL enables that as well, also contractually.
So I prefer the AGPL3 when possible, because I believe its values align with what I believe to be the best for society.
Of course, people can use whatever license they want. I personally favor licenses that maximize the rights of my users. Hopefully, though, you can now see that the combination of positions you mentioned is a consistent one.
I misread this at first. I think this makes the point more cogent:
the same people who get up in arms about government, and bitch and moan about "rights to the fruit of my labor", don't like the notion that someone can claim "the rights to the fruit of their" labor by putting a gnu license on something
The possibility of a dual licence gives the creator a compensation because he waives the rights the GPL gives him for you.
Also: Support contracts. A lot of poeple live in the support ecosystem and adapt GPL/BSD software for costumers.
Fixed:
If you use ANY GPL code in your product you have to provide the source.(There are of course exeptions eg LGPL)
Also it isn't simply derivative work that that can be forced to re-license under the GPLv3. If FreeBSD had elected to adopt a GPLv3 compiler and distribute the source(as they do with the compiler) then the FreeBSD kernel itself would become subject to it. In fact, it isn't just gcc which has this restriction. Any GPL v3 code isn't allowed in base.
Further reading:
http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/2007Aug-newsletter.sh...
You have to license any code that links with GPL code under the GPL. This does not prevent you from dual-licensing your own portion of the code base, or shipping non-GPL, non-linked code as part of the same product (Although in the case of things like DLL plugins it gets a bit hazy)
Actually, that's a common, but wrong interpretation. The whole work becomes GPL, but the code that links to GPL code doesn't have to be GPL.
The GCC 'runtime library exception' firewalls all 'target code' from the GPLv3, and even allows proprietary preprocessors, linkers and assemblers (but nothing that would involve modifying GCC to split what it does in to more granular stages)
#2 Hosting/cloudiness?
#3 Administration?
#4 Custom adaptation?
#5 Privileged early access to updates/content files?
All those different strategies has been used to "sell" GPL software. Even the last one has been used, even if their customers could repackage the update and redistribute it to non-paying customers.
Then there's the recent example of Openshot, a GPL licenced video editor where the author went to kickstarter to gain funding for improving it greatly, the goal was $20.000 and it reached $45,028.
I see a combination of these models as a future popular way of making money out of your open source efforts.
Kickstarter projects is USA specific, and it seldom works if you need a steady income of money.
As for steady income of money, true that this type of funding isn't of the steady pay-check variety but if you can continue to add value to your project then it could become a long term income.
Either way I'd say the vast majority of open source desktop software today is done without any compensation and during developers spare-time, things like kickstarter opens up possibilities for them to actually make money while doing what they would likely have done either way, and it can also give them the financial opportunity to work exclusively on the project for a period of time.
Quoting from the VideoLAN web site, > x264 is a free software library and application
That is a developer tool on my language.
Dual-licensing effectively says, "We'll let you take away user freedoms, but only if you pay the original copyright holders." Which is akin to openly bribing communist party officials.
What you shouldn't do is to hope that anyone will pay you.
The first person who pays can offer exactly the same thing for $0.
It's impossible to convince anyone that they should pay you even $1 if exactly the same thing is available for $0 from somewhere else.
The ability to charge for GPL software is purely theoretical. In practice, you can't.
Actually the majority of corporations are leechers, using it as "free beer", only paying back if they really have to, as many corporations don't use software without support contracts.
Or happen to have some FOSS followers taking business decisions.
Otherwise, I can tell you from my experience working on Fortune 500 consulting projects, very seldom is any money or contribution given back.
Radiohead's In Rainbows, the Humble Bundles and other pay-what-you-want sales disprove that statement. All had average purchase prices well above the minimum. (That doesn't mean such a model is very profitable compared to fixed prices, of course.)
Even in a purely self-interested point of view, there are reasons for paying (e.g. keeping development active).
Maybe so; can you point out those cases where the average payment for a pay-what-you-want sale was no higher than the absolute minimum?
hardly a model to follow for anyone that needs a steady source of income to pay things like mortgage, employees and such.
That's a very different claim from what I was contesting.
But in any case, it may work in when you have modest needs; Joey Hess just got his second year of development of Git-Annex funded[1]. Of course, not everyone is willing to work for $15k/year, even if it comes with few strings attached, particularly obviously talented and experienced developers like him.
That is the main point, in Germany you can earn around 5x that on an average consulting job.