[GRASS5] Leaving

[Hamish]

> it's clear that by starting with the Public Domain code, the licence
> of the future work has to be decided. The licence impacts:
...
...
> - The possibility for developers, and primarily the GRASS developers
> to make a living with GRASS (that is to have time to work on it
> because they get incomes from it);
> 
> The third point discards GPL: if once you have made a work, everybody
> can take it and do whatever one wants, a developer has no incitative
> and no means to be paid for what it actually does.

I don't agree with that at all. My job is to run models, make maps,
analyze the resultant data, and present it. I expect this is the same
for most of the mapping consultants and other university people out
there who contribute to GRASS. The GIS is just a tool I use to get
things done as is Matlab, Linux, gcc, or even RS-232. I'm not paid to
work on GRASS, for me it just gets the job done better than
Arc/BrickWall does so I use it. When I find something I need to get my
job done that doesn't work or exist, I try and get it to work so I can
move on. Submitting any [clean] results to CVS is just easier than
maintaining a personal patch archive ;). I consider the GPL aspect as
bonus altruism, and a guarantee that things will slowly improve without
my help alone.. things of great value to me at the end of the day.


> If one wants to make a GPL userland stuff, one has to be able to.

...of course

> But if one wants (or simply needs) to make a userland stuff not GPLed,
> one has to have the ability to do so.

You can do that now and use it internally. The GPL allows that. You just
have to provide your customer with the source changes & GPL notice.


seems to me like a lot of time that could be better spent fixing bugs &
reorganizing things for 5.7/6.0... but hey, if you want to or need to
use the ancient code, go for it. Just seems like a waste of your
talent to me.


regards,
Hamish