Re: gEDA-user: strange build failure

[al davis <ad106@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 06 December 2006 05:03, Evan Lavelle wrote:
> That's what it's for, as you point out. It's not a subtlety.
> Where would Spice be now if it hadn't initially been BSD'ed?
> We'd have got something else, of course, but i suspect we
> wouldn't have heard of 'Spice'.

Actually I  think we would have been better off.  The big ones 
would have been happy to pay some money to buy commercial 
rights.  The smaller parasitic ones probably wouldn't exist. 
Some others that now pay nothing back would actually pay 
something back, supporting more research.  We would likely not 
be using a 15 year old crappy rewrite of what was then 10 year 
old technology today.

> The business of universities is disseminating knowledge, with
> no strings attached. It's not such a big deal if someone
> makes money out of it; we all have to make money. In fact,
> it's essential that the process of giving away knowledge,
> without strings, should create wealth, or there would be no
> universities in the first place.

As I said, it is intentional.  There is nothing wrong with it, 
except that it makes it harder for the university to make 
money.

The problem is that the BSD type license encourages private use 
and litigation from parasitic companies that give nothing back 
to the university, other than legal problems.  Several high 
profile lawsuits in the EDA industry have their roots in this 
BSD license problem.

> The real tragedy is that universities have been continuously
> moving away from this open model, and seeking to close and
> protect their knowledge, primarily through the patent system.

That's true.  It is tragic that false statements about GPL are 
so extreme that they don't realize that something like GPL is 
the solution to their problem.  Fortunately, some universities 
do realize this.

> This is absurd, but the opposite extreme - as exemplified by
> the GPL - is equally absurd. What sort of message is this
> giving out? 

Here's the message:  We want to share with those who share with 
us.  If you want to make a commercial derivative, contact us 
and we can make arrangements.

When you see a license, any license, it says what you can do 
without any additional action.  If you are a business, there is 
nothing stopping you from contacting the owner and negotiating 
a different arrangement.  Legitimate businesses know this and 
negotiate.  Illegitimate businesses whine about it.  A lot of 
GPL software is funded this way.

> Perhaps "see how smart we are, but don't touch - 
> this is what we do with all your taxes"? There are honourable
> exceptions, of course - Antlr, for example, from Terence Parr
> at the University of San Francisco - smart guy, smart
> licence.
>
> The uncomfortable truth: the GPL is simply pointless
> religious bigotry. Making money is not evil; it's a fact of
> life. There, I said it. Somebody had to.

The GPL says I want to share, but I don't want you to steal my 
work, block it, and use it for your profit without giving me 
any.  I have nothing against making money.

I do have a problem with "business" people who want to steal 
code to make their business, giving nothing at all back to the 
developers of any kind.

As DJ said ...  "don't talk about a license unless you've 
actually read it and understand it."




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