

A defense of the GPL - silentbicycle
http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/a-defense-of-the-gpl/

======
antileet
I care a lot about having the source of programs available (freedoms 0 and 1),
but there's one thing that's always concerned me.

Everyone says that "you can still charge for free software, as long as the
source is GPLed", and hence the model is a drop-in replacement for the
standard software-vendor model. As long as you trust the goodwill of people,
you believe that those who want to use your work will pay full price for it.

But when you give everyone the right to redistribute, for any cost they
choose, I feel that might jeopardize potential sales.

For example, a friend of mine wrote an image processing application with a
very niche and important application. He wanted to sell it for $200 a copy,
lower than what most commercial tools for the same functionality cost. He also
wanted to release it as open source/free software.

However, if anyone bought a copy of his software, that person could legally
redistribute for free or for a very low cost, say $10. If this person's
publicity is better, he/she'll get more sales for a tool he didn't even write.
And someone who isn't endowed with a large enough budget would love to get the
software from a legally clean channel.

And yes, it even results in atrocities like this -
[http://cgi.ebay.com/Audacity-1-2-6-audio-editor-computer-
sof...](http://cgi.ebay.com/Audacity-1-2-6-audio-editor-computer-
software_W0QQitemZ280446402896QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item414be88150)
. Mark Pilgrim's book got re-distributed on the Kindle for a nonzero charge (
<http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/10/19/the-point> ) and he handled it in
a very mature, respectable and elegant manner.

I wish someone can explain to me how a non SaaS model - where one writes
software for a requirement and sells it as binaries - will work effectively
when someone can just re-sell your work or give it away for free.

I don't have any trouble with someone making a few bucks sneakily, but when it
prevents me from selling my software for my livelihood, I will be concerned.

I am still young and inexperienced and potentially very wrong about all of
this. If that is the case, please correct me.

~~~
silentbicycle
Software created in-house for companies, for "retail", and tools created for
programmers themselves have very different constraints, and I don't think
license discussions usually account for this. There's lots of software that
would never be written for free, period. Open source projects are strongly
skewed towards things that are useful for programmers, or at least fun or
interesting technically.

Beyond that, though. I don't know. My preference has been towards BSD / MIT
licenses, but I also know that there's a fairly strong economic incentive for
some people (web startups, for example) to use free software without
necessarily contributing back - or even to take credit to look good to bosses
or investors - and I'm not comfortable with that. It's a thorny issue.

------
mark_l_watson
Well said! Let people who create decide how to distribute their creations.
Also, that was a really good analysis of the history of balkanization of BSD
derived OSes.

