🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Adcock once suggested (in private e-mail) a useful perspective.
There are three types of people who care about the GPL:

    1) Tool and library creators, such as the FSF.
    2) Software integrators, who take tools and put them together
       into integrated products.
    3) Software users who take tools and use them.

Category 3 people might in turn be category 2 people for some other
type of product; for example, many software development companies are
probably category 3 with respect to gcc while being category 1 or 2
with respect to their own software.

In this terminology, with respect to the usefulness of software, the
GPL is for the benefit of category 3 people.  For category 2 people it
ranges from a minor annoyance to an unsurpassable hurdle.  For
category 1 people it is neutral (software is useful, or not, to the
creator irrespective of whether the GPL is used).

mathew@mantis.co.uk (who seems to be currently naming himself after a
bypass) is complaining about the GPL from the perspective of a
category 2 person.  He wants to integrate GPL'ed software with his own
software to produce a new product which he will release on his own
terms.  He claims to not understand why the GPL prevents him from
taking this action.

(Let me digress and point out the obvious, which other people have
probably mentioned as well.  mathew could release his code as a bundle
of new code and a shell script which patched the GPL'ed code to use
his new code.  His code and shell script could be distributed under
any terms whatsoever, but would, of course, require a copy of the
GPL'ed code to be useful.  However, he apparently does not find this
satisfactory).

I've written a fairly sizeable UUCP package (about 30,000 lines right
now (yikes!) including comments) which I'm distributing under the GPL.
I've seen mathew's tireless arguments against the GPL in this
newsgroup.  Why do they not convince me?

Because, frankly, I don't care about category 2 people.  I have
nothing against them, but they're not the people I'm trying to help.
I'm trying to help people who want to use my UUCP code, not people who
want to take it and use it as part of another product.  If people do
want to integrate my code with other code, more power to them, but
they are not my audience.

I've had to work with buggy code without source.  I didn't like it.  
I've also worked also worked with gcc and, yes, found a couple of bugs
in it (all fixed now, and due to my very weird configuration).
Because I had the source, I was able to track the problems down and
fix them.

Therefore, I think every person should have access to source code for
programs that they use.

I wrote a C library once (for the Alpha Micro).  I sold it (sort of)
to a company (Alpha Micro), but in my youthful naivete did not require
them to release the source code to their customers.  They chose not to
release source.  Just last week I found myself answering the questions
of a knowledgeable C programmer, questions which he could have
answered himself in minutes with access to the source code.  He found
some minor problems with one of my functions, problems which he could
have resolved himself in minutes with access to the source code.

Therefore, I am aware of the danger of allowing anybody to
redistribute my code without source: the user, the category 3 person,
might wind up with a product that is less useful than the one I want
to provide.

The GPL eliminates these problems.  That is why I use it.

The GPL also prevents some category 2 people from using the code as
they might wish to.  That's a pity, but frankly I don't really care
very much.

Some people seem to think that I should permit people to take my code,
modify it, and distribute it to users without providing the source
code to their changes.  This would mean that the users, the category 3
people that I am writing my code for, would receive a product without
source code, which is one of the things I am trying to avoid.  The
fact that the (unmodified) source code is available from other sources
is only mildly relevant.  If I were to permit such an action, I would
be letting the desires of category 2 people (that's the software
integrators, remember) take precedence over the desires of category 3
people (the users).  I don't see any reason to do that, since
(reiterating to the point of inanity) I'm trying to help category 3
people.

mathew has hinted in various postings that he is considering a
software license agreement that would satisfy the desires of all three
categories of people.  I think the GPL is an excellent piece of work,
but I'm not emotionally bound to it; if he comes up with something
better, that addresses all of the concerns described above and more
besides, I will switch.  He'll have to prove it to me first, though.

I'd like to stress that these are my personal opinions.  They probably
do not reflect those of the Free Software Foundation, and should not
be taken as either the only or the best possible arguments for using
the GPL.
-- 
Ian Taylor                  ian@airs.com                  uunet!airs!ian
First person to identify this quote wins a free e-mail message:
``The will to be stupid is a very powerful force.''