Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : Rob Thorpe
Date : Tue Aug 23 2005 10:08 am

Joe Butler wrote:
> So, what's the reasoning behind these licences that don't allow a commercial
> (closed source) apps from using them?
>
> In once sense, if the idea behind the GPL, etc. is to benefit others, this
> is a limitation that will reduce the number of people that can actually
> benefit from it.  A closed source app is not going to open its source just
> so it can use some GPL.  If the source was allowed to be used by all,
> without the restrictions on commercial apps, that would benefit a lot more
> people, wouldn't it?
>
> You'd have commercial apps integrating GPL stuff that people would buy if
> they offered something that the free alternatives didn't offer.  You have
> all the free stuff, just as if the commercial app didn't exist (except that
> you might have fewer users due to some of them prefering the commercial
> alternative).  You'd still have the open source 'community' that could
> emulate the commercial app, if they wanted to.
>
> I think if I were producing a commercial app and wanted to use some GPL, I'd
> just write an open source wrapper around the GPL stuff and release the
> wrapper so that commercial apps were allowed to use it - the wrapper might
> be a bit of a dog to use though ;-)  Would that layer circumnavigate the
> restrictions?

You should read: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ to understand the
argument.

Note that the Open Source community did not create the GPL, the
free-software community created it.

.