🚀 go-pugleaf

ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor) writes:
> mathew@mantis.co.uk (en font terrible) writes:
> >ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor) writes:
> >> The NOS (KA9Q) TCP/IP program is not under the GPL [and was
> >> distributed without source and with various other problems]
> > 
> >Then what should have been done is that several AMOS users should have
> >re-ported it themselves and provided source code for their port.  Alpha
> >Micro would have been unable to sell their program without source, or
> >maybe even with source if it's as buggy as you suggest.  So next time they
> >ported a program, they would have done it properly and provided sources.
> 
> I don't understand why this is ``what should have been done.''

Sorry, make that "What should have been done if everyone was to benefit
from AMOS..."

> the duplication of effort which you are suggesting?  Why is it better
> to force a desired action through economic competition than to simply
> require it in the first place?

Because not everyone might desire it.  Just because you don't want to do
something that's not a good reason to stop other people doing it.

> I was arguing against putting programs in the public domain.  I was
> not arguing against various choices of license agreements used by
> commercial software.  Commercial software vendors can do whatever they
> want, and they are not too likely to use the GPL; some do but most
> never will.
> 
> I was addressing those people, like myself and the authors of NOS, who
> write programs which are distributed for free, by presenting a case in
> which a public domain program was used in a counter-productive way
> which could not have occurred had the program been covered by the GPL.

To whom was it counter-productive?  To the users of NOS?  Nope, because
they got a buggy program, which is better than no program at all.  To
people who wanted NOS with source for their machine?  Nope, because they
just had to port it to that machine -- exactly the same amount of work
that they would have had to do had the commercial company not started
selling a port of NOS.

No, I'm forced to conclude that the only "problem" was that you didn't
get as much as you wanted from the commercial company.  Well, sorry, but
forcing companies to give you things doesn't seem to me to be a very 
good reason for putting programs under the GPL.

If anything, putting NOS under the GPL would have ensured that the 
commercial company wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, since there would
be no profit to be made from selling it -- and the users would have 
had no version of NOS, rather than a buggy commercial version. Hardly 
a more productive alternative.

> Sure, Alpha Micro could have done things better.  But they didn't, and
> if NOS had been released under the GPL they could not have done what
> they did.

Yeah, and which would you rather have -- a commercial version of the software,
possibly with bugs, or no version of the software?


mathew

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