Who knows the GPL well?

[gmongardi at napc.com (Grant M.)]

Matthew Gillen wrote:
> Now, I'm not anti-GPL, and I'm not claiming that these arguments always
> hold.  Only in the case of very specialized software that hobbyists
> would never be interested in.  In particular, it's easy to see that for
> software that fulfills basic services, like apache/httpd, the "you get
> other's contributions for free" argument carries a lot of weight.  But
> once you get more specialized, the arguments for sharing are less
> compelling.

The obvious issue with this sort of requirement, is that if the vendor
of the code can't get _any_ return on their investment, then it might
not be practical for them to release it under the GPL at all, and there
might not be a price to complain about or even a product ;-). If this
truly is "specialized software", then it is likely also a specialized
market, which typically means that the target audience is limited.

Additionally, if this is a company that makes it's money from support of
 their niche market, then the ideal situation would be to be the primary
distribution of the code, and offer their services at the same time. If
it were otherwise widely distributed from sourceforge for instance, then
they would miss that opportunity.
Grant M.
-- 
Grant Mongardi
Systems Engineer
NAPC

gmongardi at napc.com
http://www.napc.com/
781.894.3114 phone
781.894.3997 fax


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