On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 04:58:33PM -0400, William Chops Westfield wrote:
> 
> On May 10, 2008, at 11:40 AM, Mark Rages wrote:
> > Can you explain how the GPL does not allow you to change
> > the software to suit your needs?
> 
> "My needs include being able to keep my modifications to the open
> source material proprietary when I distribute the software."

Yup. That's a tough one. It's real difficult to balance that against the
fact that a large base of incoming software was freely given you, yet you
want to restrict the outflow of changes to others.

I don't think there's any viable resolution to this one. The right answer
is that if you need to keep your software proprietary, then you need to
write is all yourself.

>  "I need
> to keep distribution difficulties in check, and cannot afford to
> distribute my embedded product in a form where it can be re-built
> with modified versions of the open-source libraries that it uses."

Now this one has some merit. I don't think that the perfect embedded
open source license has been developed yet. I think that it's the LGPL
without the relink requirement, but I'm unsure if it takes away too many
rights from the downstream user.

> GPL advocates may claim that these are not VALID needs, or argue
> about the difficulty of meeting them within GPL, but it tends to get
> my hackles up whenever someone else is ready to tell me what *I* need.

The GPL and to a lesser extent the LGPL are licenses targeted to protect
the end user, not the developer. They are both really unabashed about that.

If you need a license that protects your rights as a developer you have to
look elsewhere. The challenge is that with lots of developers willing to
give up their rights and developing with the GPL/LGPL you get a software
base that's tantailizing to use, but simply doesn't meet your needs.

The problem is that if you change the license significantly, and end users
get screwed, with very limited access to source, and little or no ability
to use that source in any productive way.

Software commerce is about the value add with enforced scarcity. Licenses
enforce the scarcity. I just don't think there's anyway to make it balanced
because someone out there will take advantage of a loophole.
> 
> And I don't want FSF to be able to define what "open source" means,
> any more than I want RIAA to define what "fair use" means...

The FSF doesn't like the term "open source". When the term was coined in
1998, Richard Stallman wasn't there. And he and the FSF have railed against
it ever since.

BAJ
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