Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 13:39:28 +0200
From: Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>
To: Martin Diehl <lists@mdiehl.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
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On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 10:01:41 +0200 (CEST)
Martin Diehl <lists@mdiehl.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> 
> > GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term,
> > Larry. That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am
> > able to use it as is in five years from now.
> [...]
> So I don't see any long term strategy there inherent in the GPL. Simply 
> throwing RTFS in front of the people is definitedly better than nothing, 
> but doesn't qualify as a strategy to me. But maybe I'm missing something.

Indeed, there is a small but significant thing you are missing:
Whereas GPL'ed software tends to rely on open standards (that may be quite
"ancient" indeed) and gain a long-lasting usability value, proprietary software
often tries to invent the wheel for about the 110th time, only to be _not_
compatible with its own predecessors from the same company or of course with
products from competitors. Take something as simple and well-known as a text
processing software and look at the mess of the import-filters, being only
partly available, doing anything to your docs but correctly importing them and
so on.
Do you really think it was _necessary_ to change the document format in just
about any W*rd version available? Do you? Not really.
Its all about creating problems for competitors and none about being kind to
the own customer.
You don't find this kind of behaviour in GPL software.
This is only _one_ small example for what I call a long-term strategy.
If I write a book, I want to be able to save my work, even if I change the
software I am writing with.
Do you think I would be able to write this mail to you and others if internet
were proprietary? You can answer that if you know the old days of BTX and
Compuserve (just to name two examples) here in germany - a complete mess.
Learn from this example: learn what was bad about it, and learn what has
survived - internet dependant on _open_ standards heavily supported by _open_
software.

> > If I depend on being nice to commercial
> > companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to me no
> > matter what I do.
> 
> Well, as a test you might want to try asking (say here on lkml) to get the 
> GPL'ed defxx-driver working. I might be wrong but it may well turn out 
> nobody would be nice doing it for you, no matter what you do ;-)

Thing is: I may as well be able to do it _myself_, only using my brain and a
freely available compiler. Contrary to that I would have to buy a whole bunch
of software to make it work on some M$ platform, not knowing if I have to
repeat the whole story next year, when the next completely new release of an OS
comes out.
I can forsee that with upcoming DRM it will become quite likely you are not
even _allowed_ to compile your own stuff on a computer. You may well buy a
_license_ from your favourite OS-company to be able to do that (and not only
the software you need).

> > In other words: it's all about being free or being dependant on goodwill.
> 
> Nope, at least from a user's POV: While you are always free to decide to 
> use it or not - you are always depending on somebody providing you the 
> support you need to keep the stuff working for you...
> 
> For somebody willing and capable to do the maintenance himself it's still 
> imposing some dependency/constraint to him, because one needs to allocate 
> time to both keep up with the development process and do the actual work. 
> Which in turn means being dependent on other people's or institutions' 
> goodwill so you can afford said amount of time.

What market for supporting acts do you think looks more promising (to the
user):
one regulated by _one_ company (the OS manufacturer), or one where everybody
and his son in law have a chance to supply support for free _or_ for bucks at
their personal will.

Regards,
Stephan

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