[GRASS5] Leaving

[Thierry Laronde]

On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 02:07:11AM +1300, Hamish wrote:
> > 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 put it more concisely: the problem with GPL is that there are not 
only Hamish(es) all around. GPL is good in an ideal world where there
are exchanges not only taking. 

This could be exact too if people doing the work were also doing it for
their own sake (being their own bosses). Unfortunately there are some
people who work for others who strictly don't care about this kind of
moral principles: not paying for software neither with money nor time
spent by employees (and not giving to "others" what they have "paid
internally" for fixing) is their leitmotives.

This is this very same principle which has lead to the "Internet
bubble": making money without work.

If some day we can transform stupidity into energy no more shortage of
power will have to be afraid of...
-- 
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde at polynum.org>
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C