The MIT approach can equally well be seen as an optimistic approach
(where ‘optimist’ is neither a better nor a worse thing to be than
‘pessimist’, but simply the half-empty/half-full mirror-twin).
I don’t think it’s safe to assume that there’s anything culturally
tranformative about open source. Give people enough financial incentive,
and they will quickly attempt to own something they got for free. Most
open source projects don’t present enough financial temptation, but the
ones that do, can be destroyed very quickly by a too-permissive license.
Imagine the alternative history of Linux if it had been licensed under
MIT instead of GPL…
Gazoduc wrote:
The GNU GPL can be seen as a pessimistic approach: if we do not
enforce lock-out, all code will soon be locked-in.
Maybe this was correct ten years ago, but I do not think it like this
now as open source is becoming some kind of culture (things can change
Christopher J. Mackie wrote:
The MIT approach can equally well be seen as an optimistic approach
(where ‘optimist’ is neither a better nor a worse thing to be than
‘pessimist’, but simply the half-empty/half-full mirror-twin).
I don’t think it’s safe to assume that there’s anything culturally
tranformative about open source. Give people enough financial incentive,
and they will quickly attempt to own something they got for free. Most
open source projects don’t present enough financial temptation, but the
ones that do, can be destroyed very quickly by a too-permissive license.
Imagine the alternative history of Linux if it had been licensed under
MIT instead of GPL…
Please have a look here : MIT vs GPL vs LGPL for open source project - Rails - Ruby-Forum .
I posted some ideas on how the GNU GPL has made Linux distribution
oriented while the BSD license has made FreeBSD and the like research
oriented.
On 4/9/06, Christopher J. Mackie [email protected] wrote:
Imagine the alternative history of Linux if it had been licensed under
MIT instead of GPL…
Instead, imagine the alternative history if BSD hadn’t been in the
middle of a legal fight.
That’s the only reason that Linux “won”. It is generally accepted
that while Linux has the mindshare, the BSDs have higher quality
kernels.
-austin
On 4/9/06, Christopher J. Mackie [email protected] wrote:
The MIT approach can equally well be seen as an optimistic approach
(where ‘optimist’ is neither a better nor a worse thing to be than
‘pessimist’, but simply the half-empty/half-full mirror-twin).
I read a thing about that once. It said optimists say the glass is
half-full, pessimists say the glass is half-empty, and engineers say
the glass should be half its size.
–
Giles B.
www.gilesgoatboy.org