Re: pascal system

[Andy McFadden <fadden@fadden.com>]

mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally, I prefer the GPL. If I release it for people to use freely,
> I want it to stay that way. If somebody wants to license it for
> commercial purposes, I'm still the copyright holder, and they can
> contact me to obtain a proprietary licensed copy for a fee.

If you release it under BSD for people to use freely, it will stay that way.
The difference is that people who make modifications and distribute the
result aren't required to publish their changes.

The trouble I have with the GPL is that its "viral" nature forces anything
linked with it to be GPL.  As you point out, this problem is significantly
reduced with the LGPL.

I have worked on a few projects that use Linux as a base, and pull in
free software as appropriate.  It has led me to the following conclusion:
pick your license based on how many people you would like to have using
your code.  Given the choice between arranging some sort of commercial
license for GPL software and doing development in-house, companies will
choose to do internal development, either starting from scratch or adapting
a less-useful but more kindly licensed product.

On more than one occasion, I have heard the words: it's GPLed, we can't
use it.

If software like zlib had been released under the GPL, it would not have
the level of adoption that it does today.  Some products, like FreeType,
allow you to choose a license (it allows GPL or a non-GPL-compatible BSD
variant).

I think some people choose the GPL because they don't like the idea that a
company somewhere could be using their product to make money without paying
them, or using their code as a stepping-stone without giving anything back.
My experiences suggest that the company isn't going to pay you or give
anything back either way, so really it's a question of whether or not you
want your code to be used.  The only exceptions are for products of
significant complexity, such as the Linux kernel.

Read about Open Source licenses at http://opensource.org/.

Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/ has some
stuff worth reading too.

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