FC4 or FC5

[Sean]

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:06:39 -0700
"jdow" <jdow at earthlink.net> wrote:

> It was overly literal minded GPL weenies who basically drove off one
> kernel developer who was working with the deep magic of the chipsets
> involved. His business model was to make money, enough to live on and
> recoup his expenses for paying for special documents, and when he had
> paid for his time give the work to the Linux community under GPL. But
> he tried to make money to pay for doing the work. (I don't remember if
> he walked off or became captive of some one of the large distros.) If
> GPL allowed this form of business model, a reasonable income to cover
> business expenses and a personal salary during the time the code was
> developed followed by a full GPL release, I for one would not be as
> put off of working with Open Source software. That would take the
> "sore" out of the "Open Sores" problem. I do not want to get rich. I
> just want a decent income for decent work AND an incentive to go on
> to new work rather than try to sit and collect money for a decade
> earning the cost of building the product 100 times over.

The basic idea of open source or the GPL is not to see to it that jdow
can manage to find a way to make a living at it.  The fact that you
quote a case where another kernel developer was similarily unable is
again unconvincing.  There _are_ very many people who do manage
to make a living at it.

> Note that I am at a stretch only going so far as to suggest that a
> change in philosophy might be productive. It would draw in a whole
> lot of people like me. Let me earn $10000 net for 100 hours of work
> and then release it GPL. Those who pay for early copies get the benefit
> of the early copy. All get the source code once the target is met or
> say three years have passed and I go on to something new to repeat the
> cycle. This avoids several most annoying problems. The orphan product
> issue goes away. The source code must be released in three years or
> sooner from the first distribution. The disincentive of not being able
> to earn an income from honest work to provide others with a product
> that does not otherwise exist goes away. As it is, though, the grasping
> tentacles of the GPL make this kind of sharing with the GPL world quite
> impossible. And the perceived dog in the manger attitude of GPL leaves
> me quite disinclined to share my source code with GPL even for products
> that are quite mature at this point.

But you ignore the costs of such a change in philosopy.  Probably because
you don't value them as much as your need to eat, which is understandable.
However, it doesn't make the argument any more compelling.  There are
real benefits to the current GPL license, it is afterall at least in 
part responsible for the fact that this list even exists in the first place.

> I am suggesting a change. I am not, REPEAT NOT, demanding it. I am
> offering reasons I think the change would be productive. It might
> also spark some life into some of the excellent ideas languishing on
> SourceForge because they'd require more work than the people who could
> do it wish to donate. But, this is only a suggestion. It is also why
> I feel GPL should be rethought from the ground up without some of RMS's
> more extreme political attitudes.

There are a huge number of proprietary projects that languish in the bowels
of corporations because they can't find funding or support, so again I don't
think there is a perfect license that will solve that problem.

** 
Even if all your suggestions were implemented, someone else would come along
and claim it didn't meet his needs and would suggest a change.  Then you'd
explain to him how the current system was meeting _your_ needs.  Perhaps you
would then ask him to rethink his suggestion.  See?  Just because the
GPL doesn't meet your needs, doesn't mean it fails to meet the needs of
those it was designed to service.  It's unfortunate that you can't count 
yourself among their numbers, but not a reason to revamp the system.
**

It seems you're too focused on changing the GPL.  Why not just start a new
project under a license you find more appealing?  The authors of all that
GPL software aren't likely to turn around and change their minds about how
they want to make their software available.  It would seem much more pragmatic
to start up a new project based on your own vision of how things would work.
Forgive me for not being convinced.

Sean