[GRASS5] why GPL

[Eric G. Miller]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 12:36:35AM -0800, strobe anarkhos wrote:
> At 8:34 AM -0800 3/22/01, Eric G. Miller wrote:
> >On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 07:45:43AM -0800, strobe anarkhos wrote:
> > > >
> > > >At least the GRASS I/O routines shall be released under LGPL. When
> > > >restructuring GRASS, we'll make use of Frank Warmerdam's "libgrass".
> > > >Like that proprietary products will be allowed to read/write GRASS
> > > >databases directly. See the libgrass link at:
> > > > http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/related_projects.html
> > > 
> > > I don't consider this a solution.
> >
> >And why exactly should we write code and give it away under a license
> >that allows anyone to appropriate for their profit without returning
> >anything to the GRASS community?  I find this proposal eminently
> >reasonable and I will *not* relicense any code I write under any weak
> >license except for the purpose of providing import/export facilities
> >(i.e. GRASS I/O routines).
> 
> Your code is just as protected under the LGPL, and people use GRASS to
> profit anyway, like using GRASS in their profession. This will become
> more problematic if somebody wants to use GRASS more pervasively like
> in a framework many application use.

Your missing the argument.  Most of the people developing for GRASS
are end users (including myself).  The primary motivation is to have
a free and freely available GIS system.  By having many people 
contributing freely to GRASS under a free license we all reap the
benefits of each others work.  If we re-license code to allow third
parties to use our work to make non-free software the motivation to
work on GRASS is lost.  If I wanted to pay for the software, I'd just
buy one of the many commercial GIS's already on the market.  Basically
you end up with a one-way street.  Developers of proprietary add-ons
reap all the benefits, where develepors of the free parts have to pay
for the non-free parts.  I don't see any point to it.  Might as well
use ESRI or Integraph products and write to their API's (I know they'll
happily use code developed by third parties if it is robust and general
enough).

> Nobody can take your code and sell it, it's available to everybody.
> The problem with the GPL is it isn't available to everybody and it
> will prevent it from becoming widely used. Instead it will be stuck as
> a nice stand-alone app instead of a general tool. I don't have any
> plans to sell GRASStep or any project branching from that work, but I
> would like to LGPL license it in case somebody wants to write a new
> tool for it under their own license. 

GRASS already is a pretty specialized application framework.  Even
though GIS's have seen tremendous growth, they will always fill a very
specialized niche.  

Anyway, anybody can sell the GPL code already (as long as the source is
made available under the GPL license).   That's not the issue.  The
issue is one of reciprocity.

> The LGPL is not 'weak', I think you should try to be more open minded.

Well, RMS himself has argued against using the LGPL, and he wrote it!
Anyway, it's not about being open minded, its about being selfish.  I'm
selfishly withholding my code from those that would use it to make a
deritative work and then turn around and charge me for that derivative
work and never offer me unencumbered access to their source code.  I
see no benefits from the LGPL.

-- 
Eric G. Miller <egm2 at jps.net>

---------------------------------------- 
If you want to unsubscribe from GRASS Development Team mailing list write to:
minordomo at geog.uni-hannover.de with
subject 'unsubscribe grass5'