>>If you include
>>a free spare in your car, does that imply that your whole car
>>is now free ?
>
>
> If that was the condition of giving you that spare and you accepted
> that: yes, of course. You decided to enter the deal, so you have to
> fulfill your part. Otherwise refuse the tire.


Note this comment well, as it is *THE* basis for the GPL.

If you are writing something, and you want to add a new
"feature", you have a few choices:

        1) Do without the feature, and pay for it by losing
           market share, higher support costs, frustration...

        2) Buy some proprietary package that implements
           the feature, and pay $ (upfront or royalty)
           for it.

        3) Force your customers to individually go out
           and buy the feature from someone else, while
           you write your code to "use" that feature
           if it finds it already installed...

        4) Write the feature yourself - paying for it in
           sweat equity.

        5) Search the open source archives for the feature,
           read and understand its copyright and licensing
           terms, and if they are agreeable to you, incorporate
           it into your code.  Some of this code is made
           available under the GPL.

        6) ...

Making a choice implies that you have looked at all
the options, and  factored in the various costs, benefits,
restrictions, licensing, and royalty issues.

The costs of including propriatary code are usually measured
in "$".  The costs of including open source are measured
in "obligations" and "expected community behaviors".

Paraphrasing Stallman, if you want to gain the benefits of
the readily available GPL'd sources to enhance your work, you
must be willing to "pay" for it by making your derivitave
works available under the GPL as well.

If you are not willing to pay that cost, don't make that choice.

If you do make that choice, you don't have any right to complain
about the cost.  After all, you *could* have written the stuff
yourself.

   -John

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