Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : Joe Butler
Date : Mon Sep 26 2005 08:16 pm

>
> Can you agree that Open Source, in itself, is a good thing ?

If anyone can use it in any way they see fit, without restriction, then I'd
say it wasn't a bad thing.  I'm speaking here from the point of view of a
programmer that might incorporate unrestricted source and sell a resulting
product - no need to put up a load of acknowledments, etc.  No worries about
being sued by some prat that's given the source away but decides that they
didn't want me to modify it and then sell it.

If someone purchases a product and gets the source code with it to do with
it what they want without re-distributing it, I wouldn't risk it for a
mass-market situation.  I might risk it for high-end product that had tight
controls.  This is because it's not necessarily a great advantage to the
majority of users that they get the source.  In fact, in that situation, it
may become a bit of a problem, since you could end up with an inexperienced
programmer moding the code on behalf of a company and causing all sorts of
issues.  Then you have the problem that the vendor of the product getting
blamed for instability, loss of data, etc.  I guess that's one reason not to
give customers the source code - to protect yourself from problems caused by
the customer.

>
> In my personal opinion (roughly speaking):
> GPL is to Open Source what Communism is to Marxism.

I'll take your word on that - I didn't study politics.

.