🚀 go-pugleaf

mcr@Sandelman.OCUnix.on.ca (Michael Richardson) writes:
>   This round started because someone posted a note about their
> regexp library.  ....
>   Secondly, why couldn't they use the copyleft'ed one? Because they
> weren't going to distribute the end product in the public domain.
> Seems to me that they *should* spend the time to write the whole
> thing, or buy one from someone else if they intend to sell a product
> rather than a service.

Why do you take this view?  Suppose an author writes a piece
of code and places it in the public domain.  Why would such
an author be upset if someone else picked up the code and
incorporated it into a commercial package?  Who is harmed by
this?  Not the author -- who never intended to make money from
the code, as demonstrated by its release at no charge.	Not
other people who want to get the code at no charge -- it is
still available that way, exactly as if it had never been used
in the commercial package.  Not customers who buy the commercial
package -- since the package isn't fully the work of the person
selling it, it may have a lower price than it would have if the
person selling it had had to write all of it.  It certainly
won't cost *more* because of being built partly from free code.
So who is harmed?

>   Worse, people that wish to take public code and restrict it so
> they can sell it (rather than their service), are saying that they
> deserve a monopoly on selling this code.

No one can take a piece of public domain code and "restrict it"
for any reason -- that's what public domain means.  If something
from the public domain gets used in a commercial product, under
a restrictive license, it still continues to be available in the
public domain just as if the commercial product had never been
built.

>   But, by placing my code under the copyleft, I'm saying that I will
> not allow a monopoly to be had on the code. Anyone can use it and
> modify it, and give it to their friends.

If this were your only goal, you could accomplish it by simple
release into the public domain.


Jesse Perry   jesse@franklin.com   uunet!frnkmth!jesse