RE: [MLUG] Open Source political philosophy

["Woodsmall, Ryan \(IATS\)" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Open source software is freely tradable and also allows the
authors/maintainers a chance to make a fair profit.  The GPL allows for
the sale of software and supporting services.

For example, say I write some great piece of software that will be
useful to  large corporations.  I would like to sell this piece of
software to a specific corporation (or a number of them).  I would also
like to license the code under the GPL.  If I've read the GPL correctly,
I do NOT have to release this code out into the wild, only to customers
who purchased my product.  The purchasers of my program (as such,
licensees of my code) now receive all the rights that I currently hold,
and we must now trade source changes back and forth in the spirit of the
GPL if they choose to receive the source code.  This licensee now has
the right to "sub-license" the code out under the GPL, being full rights
holders as well, either gratis or libre.  They can give the code away,
and that's fine in the spirit of the GPL.

This is capitalism - I have the possibility of making money, and, if my
program can compete, it does so.  The BSD license also lends itself to
the same ideas while not preserving my "guaranteed right" to receive
code changes back.  Neither license is better, per se, they just go
about some of the same things in different ways.  Personally, I've
always liked the BSD style licenses; they just don't seem as "viral" to
me.  The GPL has never been tested in court...

If this was socialism, a thrid party (generally the government) would
co-opt my code and sell/distribute it evenly, possibly breaking up any
profit among the government, myself and other citizens.  If it was
communism, well then I just would be another government employee and "my
code" would be "their code" as well as "everyone's code." ;)

The GPL (and most open source licenses) are written with capitalism in
mind; in the climate of today's world economy, they have to be.  But the
Stallman-inspired free software (the kind that's libre as well as
gratis) movement has left us with a blurred image of sharing everything
from machine code to source for everything.  This is what leads to
thinking that open source software has a socialist or even communist
approach.

     ryan woodsmall
        EMAIL:PROTECTED


> -----Original Message-----
> From: EMAIL:PROTECTED 
> [mailto:EMAIL:PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Miller
> Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 11:11 AM
> To: MLUG Members
> Subject: [MLUG] Open Source political philosophy
> 
> On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, box191 wrote:
> 
> > Why is it that some people don't realize that open source 
> is inherently
> > based on a socialist political philosophy?
> 
> The GPL allows anyone to take the code and sell it, on CDs, 
> say, for as
> much money as they want to charge.  That sounds more like capitalism.
> 
> If open source is based on socialism, as you suggest, it provides the
> first example I've seen where socialism has defeated capitalism in a
> direct contest to develop, promote and distribute products.

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