Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 3 Jan 2003 04:08:35 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 3 Jan 2003 04:08:35 -0500 Received: from hermine.idb.hist.no ([158.38.50.15]:7686 "HELO hermine.idb.hist.no") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Fri, 3 Jan 2003 04:08:34 -0500 Message-ID: <3E15552D.9EB85DBF@aitel.hist.no> Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2003 10:17:33 +0100 From: Helge Hafting X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.5.54 i686) X-Accept-Language: no, en, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: David Schwartz CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: GPL and Nvidia References: <20030102204808.AAA9757@shell.webmaster.com@whenever> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1763 Lines: 46 David Schwartz wrote: > I don't understand why making proprietary software better and cheaper than > it would otherwise be is a bad thing. > There's nothing wrong with doing that - but _I_ wouldn't work making proprietary software better unless I got paid for it. If linux had a BSD licence you'd get fewer developers, because some would say "I don't want to do free work on a proprietary product someone else sell & have exclusive rights to." Of course readhat and others sell linux for money, but you can legally copy redhat software and re-sell it if you want to. Thanks to the GPL. Mandrake started out doing something like that, although they added their own improvements. Competition in the free software world. > It will be better because it will have a stronger base to build on. It will > be cheaper both because it will be easier to construct and because it will > have to compete with free software that is more similar to it. > A bit naive. Software pricing do not reflect the cost of development at all. Windows is one example - with their volume they don't need to charge much. > And, believe it or not, free software benefits as much from competition as > proprietary software does. Sure! And free software compete with quite a few proprietary products as you know. But competition where the competitor gets to use all of your software but you can't use the competitor's software? That's the kind of unfair competition you may get with a BSD licence. Helge Hafting - 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/