Licensing Open Source in General

[Gerhard W. Gruber]

Roland wrote:

> Personally I keep wondering if it would be that bad if we had a company
> producing a better version of WINE than the free one. Why should this be
> bad? If you don't like it, you still can use the free version. And look at

I have no problem with a company producing a better product then Wine. I
only have a problem with this if I contribute my time and brain to
something in the believe that it will stay free to use for all and them
some company comes along, takes all that work that has been done, adds a
little bit and makes the big money from it because it's got a company
name behind it. As long as it is willing to share something (money or
code) then I have still no problem with it. Only if the company starts
acting as if it did all that alone. Of course I've not THAT much
contributed by now, but I think there are other who did and I don't know
if they are so glad about this. I can't speak for them but I know that I
don't want to be ripped.

It's just like being in a NG. Many people ask there for help and if I
have time and know something I answer it because I know that, when I
have a problem somebody else will do the same for me. If there was a
company who use the NGs as a professional tool making money from the
answers then I would be also quite annoyed because I don't want others
to get rich by ripping free work off.

> Apple based his OS X on lots of free software and contributed back a lot:

That's ok then. Personally I have no problem with a company making
profit as long as it honours where it came from. And if they don't want
to do that then they could very well do everything on their own. Then
they would see how much work is involved.