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[News] Reasons Why GPL-licensed Development Makes Business Sense

  • Subject: [News] Reasons Why GPL-licensed Development Makes Business Sense
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:29:46 +0000
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Freelance
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
Is Consulting the Business Model for Free Software?

,----[ Quote ]
| One of the biggest questions that people often have about open-source 
| software is, "If I don't pay for this, then how do the developers make 
| money?" The standard answer to this question is that the developers can make 
| money from consulting services. That is, the author of an open-source package 
| can release the program for free, and then charge people to maintain and 
| extend it.     
| 
| There is some logic to this: Programmers know that the real trouble with 
| software is not necessarily writing it, but rather debugging, maintaining, 
| and extending it. I'm not aware of any program which is 
| considered "feature-complete," meaning that it contains all of the features 
| that you might ever want.     
`----

http://ostatic.com/158587-blog/is-consulting-the-business-model-for-free-softwaress


Yesterday:

Open Source Drupal Goes Commercial With Acquia

,----[ Quote ]
| The open source Drupal content management system is going commercial thanks 
| to a new company, called Acquia, that's led by Dries Buytaert, the founder of 
| the Drupal project. The new effort is aiming to bring a commercially 
| supported version of Drupal to business users and could well end up shaking 
| up the entire content management marketplace.    
`----

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3731476


Last week:

WordPress is Open Source

,----[ Quote ]
| Six Apart has recently decided that the best way to win back customers 
| fleeing their platforms is to target WordPress, which is a new strategy they 
| call competing. (What have they been doing the past 7 years?) A good example 
| is this exchange between a commenter on Valleywag and Byrne Reese, the lead 
| developer of Movable Type:    
| 
| Sundown: “@anildash: what part of Wordpress is not open source?”
| 
| byrnereese: “@Sunnduwn - I think that is a question better asked of 
| Automattic. Anil, and certainly not Six Apart, has never been briefed, nor 
| has anyone for that matter been presented with an accounting of what is open 
| and closed source at Automattic.”   
| 
| Okay, here’s some accounting:
| 
| WordPress is 100% open source, GPL.
| 
| All plugins in the official directory are GPL or compatible, 100% open 
| source. 
| 
| bbPress is 100% GPL.
| 
| WordPress MU is 100% open source, GPL, and if you wanted you could take it 
| and build your own hosted platform like WordPress.com, like edublogs.org has 
| with over 100,000 blogs.  
| 
| There is more GPL stuff on the way, as well. :)
| 
| Could you build Typepad or Vox with Movable Type? Probably not, especially 
| since people with more than a few blogs or posts say it grinds to a halt, as 
| Metblogs found before they switched to WordPress.  
`----

http://ma.tt/2008/03/wordpress-is-open-source/


How The GPL Can Save Your Ass

,----[ Quote ]
| If you are the multi-billion dollar IT industry you stick you head in the 
| sand and just keep making cars. It is after all, not your problem. That seems 
| to be the attitude of almost every company with a vested interest in the 
| computing market. There was a recent announcement indicating Intel and 
| Microsoft have put up $10 million to fund research in parallel software. Hah! 
| I'm going to laugh harder this time HAH, HAH! Ever here the phase pissing in 
| the ocean, well this is more like throwing a match into the sun. We need 
| more -- much more.       
| 
| [...]
| 
| Second, the entire in industry must co-operate and be involved. We need 
| everyone working on this problem. The best minds in high performance 
| computing have been at it for quite a while and it is time to turn up the 
| volume. Fantasies of telling your R&D guys to get on it are not enough. 
| Trying to corral your Intellectual Property (IP) with trade secrets and 
| patents is wishful thinking. The rocket scientists (and plenty of other smart 
| people) have been working on this issue for a long time. You don't have the 
| time to waste trying to expand your IP fiefdom. Instead start thinking about 
| what happens when the next generation of products is of absolutely no 
| interest to your customers.         
| 
| Third we need to respond quickly. There is no time for IP agreements, 
| posturing, and NIH ego trips (Not Invented Here). We need leaders to 
| recognize the scope and magnitude of this challenge and act. Before too long, 
| it will not be unreasonable to have four or even eight cores in a desktop. A 
| workstation or server may have double this amount. It would sure be nice if 
| my software could effectively use all these cores.     
| 
| [...]
| 
| Using the GPL will immediately remove issues that would normally choke such 
| an important undertaking. First, the any IP barriers get pushed aside and 
| everyone can cooperate openly  
`----

http://www.linux-mag.com/id/5379


What if... Windows went open source?

,----[ Quote ]
| But, given all the pressure that Microsoft is under these days from different 
| quarters, what if the company decided to reveal those jewels? Would it have 
| any impact on FOSS? Would people in the FOSS sphere really care? Would it 
| make a difference?   
`----

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17132/1148/


Related:

GPL Violations On Windows Go Unnoticed?

,----[ Quote ]
| Several of the packages I installed included GPL and LGPL software without 
| any mention of the GPL, much less source code. For example, DVD Photo 
| Slideshow (www.dvd-photo-slideshow.com) included mkisofs, cdrdao, dvdauthor, 
| spumux, id3lib, lame, mpeg2enc, and mplex (all of which are GPL or LGPL). The 
| company tried to hide this by wrapping them all in DLLs.     
`----

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/30/1221225


Microsoft Embraces Machinima ... and Maybe the GPL?

,----[ Quote ]
| To those of us who are licensing lawyers, that's an interesting development, 
| as there are those who have questioned the GPL to the extent it's not a 
| contract. Apparently Microsoft agrees with the FSF that unilateral 
| permissions "work" in the world of IP licensing.   
`----

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005419.php


What Microsoft can and cannot do

,----[ Quote ]
| While I disagree with the FSF that the term intellectual property is “a 
| propaganda term designed to confuse patent law with copyright and other 
| unrelated laws, and to muddy the different issues they raise,” I do agree 
| that Microsoft must abide by the terms and conditions of the GPL, whether 
| version 2 or 3, whichever is applicable, which may emerge as a key question.    
`----

http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2007/08/29/what-microsoft-can-and-cannot-do/


Ten Tech Blunders: Whoops, We Stepped in It!

,----[ Quote ]
| In a horrible case of foot-in-mouth that revealed deep fear behind
| a thin mask of disdain, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer compared Linux
| to cancer. Ouch!
`----

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/11070_3679516_1


Microsoft denies Novell deal is breach of 'cancer' (GPL)

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft Corp has denied that its patent deal with Novell Inc is in
| breach of the 'cancer' (GNU General Public License) or will automatically
| spread Microsoft's FUD (patent protection) to other Linux distributions.
`----

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=B8218C15-4A5C-448D-A537-C5DBC4F2B38A
http://tinyurl.com/y2royp


,----[ Quote ]
| "Microsoft says open-source software is un-American. Has the
| company completely lost its mind?
| 
| Once upon a time, Microsoft executives confined
| their criticism of Linux and free software to old-fashioned FUD
| -- fear, uncertainty and doubt. Linux wasn't good enough for
| enterprise-class systems, they declared. You couldn't get
| quality support, and it was too hard and clunky for average users.
| 
| Fair enough. But now, judging by comments made Wednesday by
| Microsoft's operating systems chief Jim Allchin (and reported
| by Bloomberg News), it turns out that free and open-source
| software is something far worse than anyone could possibly have
| imagined. It is nothing less than a threat to the American
| way of life! "
`----

http://archive.salon.com/tech/log/2001/02/15/unamerican/index.html

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