[GRASSLIST:1371] Re: creating a desktop GIS application using GRASS

[Thierry Laronde]

Please forgive my "intrusion" in this thread: I'm not at the moment a
GRASS developer so I have no rights to tell past and present developers
what they ought to do with the code --- I mean with _their_ code,
whether or not the license is a free one, they hold the intellectual
property of what they have done.

All I want to emphasize is that for me if a sole soul or a corporation
is writting from scratch some stuff they can absolutely legitimally sell
their work and refuse to give away the sources (but they must _not_ put
any software patent). But these models work well for a centralized
corporated development or a small project handled by an individual.

What allows the GPL is a distributed development, that is it allows
individuals to build together something that, isolated, they would never
have reached. And this creates too a kind of new economic model:
individuals can sell the services to customize a big software, allowing
people to do exactly what they need to do (when the present tendancy is
to have people running software that does exactly the same thing which
has this pecularity to fail to match any pecular requirement). This
allows developers to be free in the sense of making a living alone
without depending on a corporation.

I know by experience that a lot of people like free software because
they understand only: gratis."Give me your watch and in exchange I will
tell you the time it is". When I try to contribute, I do it as an
acknowledgement to developers, not to end users.

I'm not a GPL fanatic, and I do understand the BSD license with the
advertising obligation enforced (and I cease to understand without it).
But I have not found a really better alternative and, altogether, I
think it's a sensible one for that kind of development.

Please note too that a developer always keeps the intellectual property
on his work, and that it's absolutely legal that _he_ may derive some
"proprietary" work from his original work: he can relicense his stuff.

Cheers,
-- 
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde at polynum.org>
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