Licensing response and an idea

[Tony Bryant]

On Thu, 14 Feb 2002 13:55, Brett Glass wrote:
> At 01:13 PM 2/13/2002, Christopher Dewey wrote:
> >With the exception of the copyright holder(s), (L)GPL provides everyone
> >with the same rights.  The license does not discriminate between
> >developers and "potential developers".
>
> Not so. The (L)GPL allows everyone to use the code in the way
> that benefits him or her the most, EXCEPT for developers -- who
> not only may not use the code but may be exposed to claims of
> copyright infringement if they even read it in order to learn
> from it. The (L)GPL is also intended to destroy their markets,
> businesses, and livelihoods. The (L)GPL is thus extremely
> discriminatory against programmers.

It just forces a different way of making money - charging for your
time, not charging for your IP. Revolutionary concept - charge for
work done. Doesn't exactly fit with the bill gates of this world, 
but for small programmers like myself, most of my work is one-offs
anyway.

(L)GPL just doesn't suit business people. i.e. those expecting to sit
back and watch the money roll in.

One has to wonder why it matters what other people do with Wine. Wasn't 
Wine developed because we wanted to run some windoze apps on linux? 
Who really cares what codeweavers, transgaming etc do to it. Just as
long as I can still run my windows apps on linux, I'm happy. If lindows
sells a few copies of what is effectively free, what skin is it off
our noses?