20 Dec
2005
20 Dec
'05
1:37 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Cameron Kaiser once stated:
He felt he was safe with the GPL, in this case, since most embedded
systems link everything---the operating system, device drivers and
applications, into one large binary program, and as such, if an embedded
company used his GPLed version of the code, it would taint the rest of the
code and customers of the company could demand the source code to
everything. That's why he was willing to license it under a non-GPL
license.
I'm unaware of any other open source but non-commercial type license, but
you have to remember---the GPL was written not only by Stallman, but by a
lawyer that specializes in intellectual property [1], so it's strong enough
to stand up in court [2].
Over time, be became aware that multiple
companies in China were
downloading his webserver and embedding the software into commerical
products. Since these companies did not negotiate an alternative license to
the GPL, they were then bound to the GPL license and my friend would have
been within his rights to buy a unit and demand the source code. His
chances of actually *getting* said source code were nil. The Chinese
companies don't care and it would have been prohibitively expensive for him
to sue. Since his intent was to make money off the codebase (and he spent a
few years working on the software [3]---following the HTTP spec [4] isn't
easy and there are some rather interesting corner cases).
So what did he do? The next release was no longer under the GPL. You
want the code, you have to buy it [5].
This kind of thing is why I won't use the GPL. In my case, I only care about
free as in beer, and if I'm not making a buck off of my creation, neither
should you. GPL doesn't prohibit this, and so it's unsuitable for my purposes.
On the other hand, it should also be pointed out that
the Chinese crooks in
this case probably wouldn't have cared what license it came over. Unethical
people don't let a little thing like a license stand in their way.
That is true.
-spc (I've released stuff under the GPL, and if you can make money with
my code ... more power to you ... I certainly haven't ... )
[1] My friend spent about $5k getting a custom written license which
stands a chance of holding up on court.
[2] If the GPL as a license fails, then the case falls to a copyright
infringement---a rather clever legal hack if I do say so myself.
[3] (not included here)
[4] (not included here)
[5] (not included here)