It is worse than that. You can't even integrate a GPLed server program with a closed source client program, only interacting via TCP, if they constitute a single "bundle". See the "SDR Touch" story here: http://lists.osmocom.org/pipermail/osmocom-sdr/2013-January/...
Antirez, how would you feel about a company that forks redis, renames it, removes all references to you and sells it successfully to some enterprises as next-gen super database, making a lot of money? Maybe even enhancing it, fixing bugs, or doing some other work in a closed-source manner (documentation, translation stuff.).
In your post you say that you appreciate when people make money out of your work but you also seem to have the faith that people contribute back because forks are inconvenient.
I'm fine with this of course, that's why Redis is BSD licensed. I don't expect users to just use a subset of the rights they have with this license. However as I said the real value is in the evolution of software. If a company can evolve a Redis fork very well, they are able to provide new releases that are stable with well designed features, they are probably also able to rewrite it from scratch (with bigger efforts), so I just provided a tool to enter into business ASAP.
I see. I think i'm just not as good a person as you, i would not like that. From my point of view the company could as well operate open-source and make money through additional services (e.g. Redhat) and that would bother me very much.
Personally I also think of it like this:
If someone can make money out of what I provide for free, they're providing some service. They either have better hosting, promoting, features, bugfixes, etc, etc, if you treat this service, however small, as added value, it is only reasonable they can get paid for it.
That's why i tried to make an example where that added service is not existing or very small. Making your money with "added services" or some real additional value is fine but then, you could just stay with GPL. I tried to build that example where someone exploits the "do whatever you want". Like rebranding everything, telling some customer "that's my product" and "please pay $$$$$$ for that awesome product".
Of course in that example the customer would still have some kind of contract and that sales person would still have to offer some kind of support/guarantee..
This implies that they are only being paid for their added value, when in real situations they are often getting all of the benefit as they are in control of the customer relationship at that point; if a system like redis allows you to build something really complex and profitable with only a few days of effort (whether it be another developer tool or a website for end users that allows you to comment on cat pictures), when it took antirez an immense amount of time to build redis itself, then the question is whether the value you got for your profitable business is really yours to have, or whether "by all rights" a good chunk of it should have gone to antirez (who then might use it to cause more open code to exist, such as working on redis).
In this case, honestly, antirez's opinion seems to have an internal contradiction. On the one hand, he is perfectly fine with someone taking the things he's done, forking them for their purposes, making something theoretically valuable out of it with minimal effort, and then sequestering all of the value. On the other hand, his article clearly states that what he feels is missing in the world of open source is that the people who make the systems that people rely on to build their empires don't get paid for it, and don't get any money in return to pay their time to maintain their software. As someone who made this same mistake on various occasions, this really seems like someone who has caused their own problem: giving something away for free under the least restrictive license possible, and then wondering why they are unable to hold on to any of the value from it.
To quote his article:
> In my opinion instead what the open source does not get back in a fair amount is money, not patches. The new startups movement, and the low costs of operations of many large IT companies, are based on the existence of so much open source code working well. Businesses should try to share a small fraction of the money they earn with the people that wrote the open source software that is a key factor for their success, and I think that a sane way to redistribute part of the money is by hiring those people to just write open source software (like VMware did with me), or to provide donations.
^ antirez: If you really believe this, why not encode it into your license? You could easily say "if you want to use this for a project larger than X or making more than Y, you have to be willing to hire me in a support capacity". Alternatively, why not use one of the existing "tried and trusted" open source business models, such as "redis is awesome, but it is under a restrictively-free license; if you wish to use it for a purely selfish and commercial purpose, you thereby must contact me to get a special re-licensing of this program for your purposes, the royalties from which can be used to pay costs associated with redis, hire people (including myself) to work on redis, and generally can compensate the community for the success that using our product will bring you". Yes: the (A)GPL is the common license used to cause that to happen.
Redis is a poor example because it is licensed under BSD which you can do exactly what you're describing. If you think there's something wrong with a corporation (likely a few hackers) selling open source software and making money off of it then, well, you simply don't belong in open source.
This is exactly how Redhat operates.
But there's obviously a difference between making money (re-branding) and then attempting to re-license (or break the existing one, assuming GPL, by not contributing back).
I think Red Hat is a prime example of a successful opensource company and if every company would operate like that we wouldn't need GPL. Clearly, that's a bad example. Red Hat does contribute to BSD licensed software as well, it's not at all what i described..
I think this is unrealistic considering technical debt involved in any codebase. There is an example of what you described, specifically a company that rebranded Blender, renamed it to 3DMagix. I guess the companies you're describing are mostly out to make a quick buck and they'll do it regardless of licensing.
How would you feel about someone taking pictures of you while you are using the restroom? clearly we should ban cameras from restrooms and remove all sorts of windows. In fact, we should demand all pictures taken with a camera to be submitted to a public archive, just to make sure no evil deeds are done.
... as people generally don't like pictures of them being taken of them while they are in the bathroom, we actually do have laws that state that it is illegal to do so; past that, your analogy doesn't hold: we don't require all software to be submitted to a central archive so as to enforce GPL.
