On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.orgwrote:
proprietary is proprietary and foss is foss - and never shall the twain meet. A product that claims to combine the two is the worst kind of hypocrisy and does not deserve discussion on this list. The devil can quote scripture and proprietary creeps can 'release' a subset of their offerings under GPL. But neither can make it into the kingdom of heaven.
Let's say there are two companies F and P.
F makes Free software and releases it to the world with code. F is happy, and so are users. Then, P comes along and tells F that it has some nice add-on tools for the Free software and wants F to relicense it to P under a different license and gives F some money. F is happy since he earns and gets a chance to support this endeavour further. P has a client-base which is happy to pay for the additional features - sans source for the *add-on* tools.
Why can't we be friendly with F? F *owns* the software, and it's entirely F's prerogative to sell it under another license too.
And if you are so unhappy, take the Open version and fork. But I don't see that having any meaning, as the source-code is already GPL'ed. Unless it's the GPL which is a source of concern to you.
What am I missing in your arguments?
Thanks, jaju