On Fri, 2010-12-31 at 14:01 +0530, jtd wrote:
True. The GPL was designed to ensure wins for both the developer and the end user. The party that loses in this system is the distributor - he now has to play by the rules, or drop out of the system altogether. GPL-violations.org tracks those distributors who are being difficult about it.
Only violators are losers. Whoever abides by the rules and tailors his business to the rules wins, including distributors - in a way everyone is a minor contibutor to the overall system and everyone is a distributor, including distro vendors like canonical, slackware, whoever. Whiccever way you look at it, everyone is taking orders of magnitude more than they are putting in. The best part is this is intended by design.
right now we are discussing a perversion of the GPL - keeping so-called GPL code private. I do not agree with much that Stallman says - but I *do* believe that he has drafted the GPL for the purpose of protecting the rights of a publisher of source code in the open. At least I hope so. If one keeps the source code private (between two individuals), then of what use is GPLing it (apart from bragging rights - 'I am a foss programmer because my code is GPLed').