[erlang-questions] [ANN] Erlang UUID

[Jeff Schultz]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 04:27:21PM -0700, Michael Truog wrote:
> numbers are: #5 and #6.  You may notice the paragraph hiding at the
> bottom of the page with the first sentence that says "The GNU General
> Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
> proprietary programs.", which is a useful summary of the problem.  Any
> modifications of GPL software retains the GPL license and must be
> distributed with the source code.  This is good for making sure that
> modifications always feed back into the open source community.
> However, this is bad for any proprietary changes that give a company a
> competitive advantage.  I don't regard my previous statements as
> erroneous, just simply more abstract.

The difference of viewpoint is simply that yours is "What rent can I
collect by reselling software someone else has released with a GPL
license?"  The "someone else", who wrote the software in the first
place, usually picked the GPL because their viewpoint was "What rent
can I collect by releasing my software so that others will use and
improve it?"

You're partially correct in that it can be harder for someone with
your viewpoint to make money, though it doesn't seem to be hurting
Apple,* Google or RedHat all that much.  Each has a different business
model for dealing with the masses of GPL code essential to their
businesses.


    Jeff Schultz


------------------------------------------------------
*Apple tried the embrace-extend-extinguish business
model it learned from Microsoft on some GPL software,
and failed, so it's working to replace as much of it
as it can.  It loaths GPL, but the people who put
their work under it seem pretty happy with the profits
from *their* business model.