[GRASSLIST:1364] Re: creating a desktop GIS application using GRASS

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 10:37:49AM +0200, Radim Blazek wrote:

> Or do you worry that LGPL discourages new contributors?
> No, GPL does! During 4 years of GPL did not appear any new developer
> contributing to vectors and from those who were working on vectors we lost:
> David D. Gray, Eric G. Miller and Bill Hughes (sorry if I forgot anybody).

This hypothesis of yours is not conclusively backed by the data.
There might be many other reasons why those developers do not
contribute anymore. 

It might be very well the case that we might have lost even more
developers if we wouldn't have used the GNU GPL.
I can understand your frustration with the vector implementation
to a certain extend. On the other hand I did see GRASS and its
infrastructure continously improving since we made clear licensing
terms and choose the strong protection of the GNU GPL.
We gained many supporter since then.
And there is an argument that the strong protection
was actually good for GRASS, as the unprotected Public Domain version
was cannibablised several times by proprietary software vendors
which let to GRASS being in the bad state it was before Markus
started its work.

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