Re: GPL or LGPL

[Eleftherios Gkioulekas <lf at amath dot washington dot edu>]

My 1cent as a fellow scientist. Free software development, in an academic 
setting, should contribute to count of published papers. The problem is
that academics have abandoned the advancement of the state of the art
of computing to corporations. We should be in the process of reclaiming it
back from them. GSL is one small effort in doing that.

The attitude "software is our tool, not our real work" has been and
will be our self-inflicted curse. If we don't do it, no-one else will do it 
right; especially corporations.

Personally, my original thesis topic has given me misery, unhappiness, 
and RSI, so I have switched to purely theoretical work. :|

Elef.

>Hey, guys! It seems that I started a discussion that has nothing to do
>with the list. But I find this funny and I will contribute with my cent:
>
> I am scientist, as probably most of you. I don't expect to make money 
>with a scientist salary. I don't want to drop years of study working for a
>company that makes M$ doing web pages, or developing financial software.
>
> The Linux vendors are doing zillions selling(somehow) free GPLed
>software, and I
>definitelly don't want to contribute to these companies without getting a
>revenue. I'm not sure if I find enough retribution in seing my name
>published in some Linux magazine or whatever. If you guys are married, I
>am pretty sure that you wives we'll find your point of view very romantic,
>but stupid! I spent months working on my project and that's the way she
>sees releasing my software under GPL! I started to think that th GPL is
>some kind of conspiration to have hundreeds of very intelligent
>programmers (as you!) working for free. I don't see fair to work for
>free. Even if this is my hobby I'd like to try (I have the right) to get
>some proffit of it.
>
> I know this will play agaist me:
> My wife said: "OK, you are doing a clone of a commercial software, and
>your program we'll eventually cost a lot of money to that company. A few
>dozens of people make their living working for that company, and earn 
>money. If you are going to create a company to compete with them that
>could lower software prices and give some benefits to the community,
>that's fine. If people spend years studying to get a job, and then they
>appear some cowboys like you doing free software, this will become a
>snowball, all software will be free. (That's GNU idea) nobody will give
>you a dime for doing software if they can get it for free. All off you
>will become unemployees, or you'll work for big companies that make big
>revenues, for a symbolic salary (RedHat?) (Cygnus?) (Corel?) (Sun?)". It's
>maybe kind of extremist, but I think I got her point, and somehow I agree
>with her.
>
> On the other hand, what's the way of doing money with GPLed software?
>
> I started to see Apple, Netscape, Sun, et al. just... VERY CLEVER! They
>will be the only companies at the very end, and we'll be their slaves!
>
> Shoot!
>Regards,
><ADRIAN>
>
>On Sat, 26 Feb 2000, Klaus Schilling wrote:
>
>> Mark Galassi writes:
>> 
>>  > You can certainly use GSL internally; you just can't make a non-GPLed
>>  > product out of it.
>>  > 
>> Yeah, that's a very common misunderstanding.
>> 
>>  > You should certainly consider coming out with a GPLed product that
>>  > uses it: many companies make good revenue with GPLed products.
>>  > 
>> See http://www.cygnus.com , http://www.prosa.it , http://www.senga.org,
>> http://www.idonex.se , http://www.id-pro.de ,  http://www.cendio.se,
>> http://www.cyclic.com
>> I forgot the addy of R. Stallman's favourite Example, the Ada Core Team
>> of Robby Dewar.
>> 
>>  > We are not sympathetic to the argument "I really want to use your
>>  > library to make a proprietary product..."
>>  > 
>> Exactly! All software should finally ne free.
>> The Lesser GPL (or similar licenses like the one of guile) are
>> only to be thought as a temporary solution.
>> 
>>  > Your examples of institutions that have put out products under a
>>  > university-style license (like the X11 license or the new BSD license)
>>  > is not all that enlightening: the real lesson to me is that these
>>  > products (like Tk and X) have been frequently put into non-free
>>  > products.
>> 
>> Exactly. And particularly dangerous are licenses like those of
>> Mozilla, Qt or the non-free but open source Apple stuff, the latter
>> because it aims to extend the power of copyright beyond its common
>> boundaries.
>> 
>> Klaus Schilling
>> 
>