[osflash] OS Licensing GPL vs. BSD

[Johannes Nel]

pmd is great! something simmiliar for AS would be awsome!!!!!!!!!!!

On 7/8/05, Richard Kilmer <rich at infoether.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Jul 8, 2005, at 3:44 AM, Luke Hubbard (luke at codegent.com) wrote:
> I think it all depends on what kind of software it is.
>  
>  For MTASC its good for it to be GPL. Its a standalone tool and Nicolas has
> put a lot of effort into and doesn't want others to profit from that work
> and wants to retain control. I see it like the other command line apps you
> get with Linux. For this type of app GPL makes perfect sense. 
>  
>  For a framework or utility which you want other people to use then BSD or
> Apache is best. If ARP was GPL I would guess there would be far fewer people
> using to build applications. If you have coded in java you will know that
> without Apache it would be much more work to build commercial applications. 
> 
> Agreed, and the reason that is the reason that ActionStep is BSD.  InfoEther
> (my company) decided to BSD license it specifically because we believe that
> a component framework should be free for everyone (commercial or
> non-commercial).  If your company's competitive advantage is a specific
> component framework, its  a tenuous advantage at best.  I mean, there is a
> barrier to creation, but not that huge.  An application built with a
> component framework that solves some valuable domain problem in a unique
> way...that's advantage.  In addition...if you ever want to build a community
> around something you build on a framework like ActionStep (one that includes
> commercial and non-commercial folks), you want the barriers to entering that
> community to be minimal, and a BSD attribution-type license is pretty
> minimal.  
> 
> InfoEther also employs Tom Copeland, the author of PMD, a Java source
> analysis system. ( http://pmd.sourceforge.net )  That framework is also BSD
> licensed.  We did not see PMD as a software framework that provides a
> strategic advantage to our company.  We wanted to build a community around
> since it would benefit us, our customers who were paying us to write it at
> the time (DARPA), and others who needed to use tools like PMD but wanted
> better control/could not afford $$ solutions like JTest.  The community
> effect around PMD has been very strong, and several commercial entities have
> rolled it into their solutions.
> 
> But we don't feel stupid for choosing BSD over GPL ;-)
> 
> -rich
> 
>  
>  Personally I prefer BSD / Apache. I see open source code reuse in
> commercial software as a benefit for everyone. 
>  Many great open source and commercial products wouldn't exist without it. 
>  
>  Choose a license based on what it is you are building, do you want people
> to 'use it' or 'build on it' ?
>  
>  -- luke
>  
>  
> On 7/8/05, Nicolas Cannasse <ncannasse at motion-twin.com> wrote:
> > > At Slashdot there is an interesting discussion going on about GPL and
> > > BSD style of licensing os software. In particular i found this article
> > > insightful:
> http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155207&cid=13011294
> > >
> > > I've never seen it that way. GPL gives the author great power and in
> > > contrast to my ancient believe, the possibility to make money of his 
> > > work, because people "don't" want to gpl their derivative stuff.
> > >
> > > Do you know there any hidden reason for an author, not to use GPL?
> > 
> > Not which I know.
> > A GPL license give rights to the User of the software only, it says
> shortly 
> > "you can use this software for free as long as your software is GPL". It
> > doesn't remove any right of the author(s) so they're open to relicense it
> > and then sell the code under another license to a company. Few years ago I
> > did GPL paid development : the company wanted to have GPL software so
> users
> > can use and extend it but they wanted to keep the "basic" version with
> > unrestricted licensing to include in their products.
> > That's why IMHO GPL is a good compromise if you want at the same time to
> > write great software and share it with community and preserve your rights
> to
> > live from the software you're writing. That doesn't means as the slashdot 
> > post author says that people using BSD license are stupid, it's just that
> > they have different goals.
> > 
> > Nicolas
> > 
> > 
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> > http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
> > 
> 
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-- 
j:pn