Robert Ammerman wrote:

> I strongly disagree with this. A truly 'altruistic' upstream provider of 
> software can (should?) be willing to allow people the freedom (!) to use 
> their software, expand on it, and not have to open up the result.

Come on, we all know writing decent software is a /lot/ of work. Who would
do all that with nothing in return -- not even the hope for a better
(software) world? (For whatever values of "better" the writer hopes...) 

Why is it that it's always the others that should be altruistic? It's
obvious that the GPL is for people who hope for a software world that's
based on open sources. To get there, they have to write a lot of code under
GPL, all free to use (in any form, even modified) and it must be good
enough to make an impact, so that people rather use these programs than
most others. I don't get it why someone can complain about this. It gives
us all a lot, but not everything. So now people complain that they can't
get everything?

> For example: let's say I use an open-source implementation of a web-server, 
> but then add in a lot of my own code to built the content that is served 
> out. Why should my efforts be _required_ to be released to others?

Maybe because your business model of selling the software only works if you
get the web server for free (without even the GPL attached)? This is then a
problem of your business model, not the GPL. "It would work just fine, if
the code of that web server wasn't GPLed" is not much different from "it
would work just fine if I could get access to the sources of proprietary
web server X" -- it doesn't work. That's not the fault of the GPL nor the
proprietary nature of the code base of web server X; it's just a business
model that doesn't work, not much different from me daydreaming how nice it
would be if I could waste a few millions on some of my ideas.

Gerhard

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