🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DAVEG.91Jul2180948@torment.cs.caltech.edu> daveg@csvax.cs.caltech.edu writes:
>Think of it this way:  Company X knows all there is to know about, say,
>laying out circuit boards.  They write software that uses this knowledge
>to do a good job of layout.  If you have a design you want made into a
>board, you could mail them the design, let their engineers run it through
>their software, and have them mail back the result.  Instead, company X
>graciously allows you to execute the software on your own machines, thus
>avoiding all the overhead of communicating your design to their people.
>But for company X to give you their source code under the GPL would be
>comparable to offering to have their engineers teach your people all their
>best tricks, and to encourage you to tell these tricks to all your friends.
>They might get a plaque for distinguished public service, but they would
>also go out of business because nobody would come to them for their
>expertise anymore.

If the people at company X really know that much more about laying out
circuit boards than anyone else, then they're not going to be hurt that
much.  While competitors are looking at the release N source code, company
X will already be well into development of release N+1.  Company X always
has the advantage of time.

But in reality, company X can't know "all there there is to know about"
their application domain.  The GNU philosophy is that we should all be able
to build upon each others' expertise, filling in these holes in expertise
to produce better software.  In particular, if I purchase software from
company X, and *I* come up with an idea to enhance it (either a new
feature, a customization, or a bug fix), I should be able to implement that
idea.  But without the source code, all I can do is plead with company X
that they implement my idea.  Since I'm not the only customer making such
requests, and company X has finite resources, there's a good chance that my
request will not be fulfilled.  In fact, if my need is extremely
specialized, they may reject the request outright because they have a duty
to expend their resources on enhancements that will benefit more customers.

If I had the source code, I wouldn't be stuck waiting for company X to get
around to implementing my request.  And company X wouldn't have to feel as
guilty about giving my request lower priority than some more critical ones.

Furthermore, company X usually can't afford to port their software to every
conceivable platform; if I use an unsupported platform and source isn't
available, I'm SOL.  If I can get source, I may be able to compile it for
my machine.

-- 
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar