🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <00gceB9w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (en font terrible) writes:
>> OK, I'll bite... If the code avialable from FSF is any indication, I'd
>> say everyone benefits from their efforts.  If their code did not have
>> a GNU copyleft, how would it have helped everyone?
>
>By providing people with useful programs and source code they can use to
>develop other programs.

I'll ignore the obvious comeback and deal only with the commercial benefits
of the GPL, which is a different angle than is usually discussed here.

Just about everyone who's brought out a RISC chip lately has ported
gcc to it; in many cases it's the only compiler available for the chip.
gcc was originally written for the Vax and the 68000; the feedback provided
by the porters, TOGETHER WITH THEIR SOURCE, made it far easier to port gcc
to each additional chip and architecture.  Without the GPL, each vendor would
have started with gcc anyway (why not?  It's a high quality piece of work
they could get free), but not sent their own sources back to FSF.  Result:
lots of people very expensively reinventing the wheel.  Instead, gcc has
become easier and easier to port.  Now there's a community of people inside
comanies that normally compete with each other, all working on getting gcc
version 2 up to snuff.  When the guy at Data General finds a way of making
code on the 88000 run a bit faster, often the trick he used applies to some
other RISC machine.  Instead of hiding it as a trade secret, it gets sent
out and possibly picked up by the guy at AMD doing the 29000 port.  And so
on.

Conclusion: at least in the case of gcc, lots of people have benefited a
great deal from the GPL, and would have benefited less if it had been
licensed like the X window system (although GNU extremists still need to
acknowledge that there has been a great deal of contribution of source
to the X consortium by vendors).

I don't necessarily think that everyone should use the GPL; I don't
like telling people what to do so I tend to prefer X-windows-type licensing
on the free software I produce.  But I must acknowledge that the world
has benefited substantially at least in the case of gcc from the GPL.

--
Joe Buck	jbuck@ohm.berkeley.edu
"If we face a recession, we should not lay off employees; the company should
sacrifice a profit.  It's management's risk and management's responsibility.
Employees are not guilty." -- Akito Morita, chairman of Sony