🚀 go-pugleaf

Earlier in this thread, it was suggested that a company would not
pay, e.g., $100000 for software which nine other companies would
then grab under the GPL, while with no GPL all ten companies would
contribute $10000 each.

Why couldn't all ten companies contribute to have something
written under the GPL?  Several Big Names have contributed to
the GNU project.  In that case, of course, the project was started
before the contributions were received.  But for specialised
software, the companies who are going to use it would know
who their competitors are and find it easier to coordinate funding.

Why should they contribute, you ask?  Because if your nine
competitors are going to share the cost of a tool which will
threaten your share of the market, and if your contribution is
considerably less than the cost of going your own way and buying
an equivalent tool, you cannot afford not to contribute.  And,
just as freely available programs benefit from wide usage, which
helps spot bugs and weaknesses quicker, which finds fixes for them
faster, and which makes new contributions to them, so too the same
benefits would accrue to companies who shared the expense of writing
a specialised software package.

Of course, such companies might fear that one of their members would
hoard some of the fixes and contributions, but this fear might be
reduced if the companies signed an agreement to share contributed
code -- an agreement that might look very much like the GPL?

				A. V. Le Blanc
				University of Manchester
				LeBlanc@uk.ac.mcc