> Try and think about this from our point of view. We provide a complex
> yet useful product for free. While doing so accomplishes our goal of
> helping the kernel community, it also puts us at far greater risk that
> someone will just reimplement the software. Creating this software
> was quite difficult and we are not in the business of providing a
> roadmap to our competitors, they get to find their own way.
That's somewhat analogous to the situation with Trolltech's QT, before it was GPLed.
> If you want to suggest license changes do so showing that you understand
> why we did what we did and show how your changes accomplish that in
> a better way. Suggestions like "you guys are idiots, just GPL it and
> you can make money from support" just get ignored. Suggestions which
> increase, rather than decrease, our risk also get ignored.
You could do what Trolltech originally did, before they GPLed QT, and grant free licenses to developers who are developing free software - no matter who they work for. I.E. If they work for BigFatCompany, Inc, but work on kernel patches in their lunch break, they get to have a free Bitkeeper license, whether they use it on the work computer or their own laptop.
John.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 07 2002 - 22:00:50 EST