Re: [SHAMELESS PLUG] SGI to make XFS available to Linux

[Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 20, 1999 at 01:32:55PM -0500, SWAPS wrote:
> > May be, I'm spending too much time on the net reading BSD Vs GPL wars.
> > I know for a fact that corporations are a lot more comfortable with
> > BSD than GPL. And both Linux and GPL have so much mindshare that any
> > Joe free software developer is going to choose GPL, without much of a
> > thought.
> > 
> I donot understand why corporations cannot live with GPL when companies like
> Alladin (maintainer of Ghostscript) can and profit from it. You just release
> the older version as open source and keep the latest technology till you donot
> have any edge over others and then you release that also.

Two reasons:

(a) GPL forces the company to disclaim all patents pertaining to the 
    released code. (Note: I'm not a big fan of patents in general and
    software patents in particular).

(b) The latest technology can't be released under a proprietary license
    if it is in the same address space (that's where GPL draws the line)
    as the GPL code. The moment you release the binaries with GPL code, 
    you are _required_ to release the sources also (GPL is viral).

	-Arun


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