I have always disliked the “GPL doesn’t prohibit commercial use” argument. You k...

mcny · on Jan 20, 2019

> I have always disliked the “GPL doesn’t prohibit commercial use” argument. You know well why it isn’t practical to use for commercial purposes. You basically make any project using it into an unlimited full featured free trial.

I don't get it. What would be so wrong about making your source code available to everyone (including your competitors)? Remember, if your source code is AGPL and someone uses it, their source code is also AGPL and they must make their changes available to their users.

If you deliver real value to your customers, the fact that your source code is publicly available should be a plus point for your customers.

int_19h · on Jan 20, 2019

It breaks the pay-per-copy model, which is realistically the only one that is viable for a lot of proprietary software.

giancarlostoro · on Jan 20, 2019

How competitive would Google or Facebook be if all of their code were fully open sourced?

mcny · on Jan 21, 2019

I don’t know about google or Facebook but I imagine I could argue the secret sauce is configuration which (I anal) I imagine is not something you’d have to release under any GPL. The threat isn’t so much that someone will build a competing google as much as I think it is someone will game our system. Just my guess.