neat story

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

Il mer, 2002-03-20 alle 01:56, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra ha scritto:
> On Wed, 2002-03-20 at 00:13, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> > El Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 11:22:06PM +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra deia:
> > > Boss: Does GPL really allow someone to use commercially the output of a
> > > program?
> > I don't understand. Most licenses allow the output of a program to be used
> > commercially. I wonder whether you can forbid it. Even Microsoft  allows 
> > Word documents to be printed and sent to customers or providers...
> 
> I told him that, but in his reasoning, you had paid for Word...
> 
> > One thing is having doubts about whether they can get enough 
> > money to keep going, but doubts about whether it is fair to use 
> > a GPL program?
> 
> His doubpts are if it is fair to have so much work, and then some smart
> ass company makes a lot of money and not pay the developer for
> anything...

Hey, hey, please: don't be offensive.
It is definitely fair as far as the developer is free to reuse other's
free sofware code ;-)

At the end of the story, succesfull companies will be those who sell
their competence, not program licenses. If you are not competent in (at
least) using and supporting a free sofware application, your customer
will turn to your competitors.
On the other hand, succesful developers are those who use their
competence: you cannot just shake a bounch of free software code and
obtain "The Perfect Application" for a particular need. Also, the world
is full of developers who doesn't consider money "the matter", there are
a lot of *other* motivations to develop (and in general to do other
things in life like Xavi Drudis Ferran excellently pointed out in this
thread)

Last but not least, it should be definitely good if conscious companies
and individuals helps free software development the way they can afford:
by founding[1], developing[2], advocating[3] and so on; so that free
sofwware developers can... breathe.

> that's where he considers it unfair -- I couldn't demove him
> from that point of view :(

Lets try first to convince him that seldom developers earns money by
selling software licensens; indeed, "The Lords of Money" (would you call
them smart ass companies???) makes a lot of money and don't pay the
developers the same way they get paid. Also, seldom developers becomes
"Lords of Money" ;-)

Lateral thinking???


Ciao.

[1] because a certain amount of money in a prerequisite to live
[2] because free sofware is a prerequisite to other free software
[3] because social recognition is ego appeasing and makes you feel alive

-- 
Art and science are free and free is their teaching [IT Const., art.33]
Associazione Culturale MiLUG       | Xelera - servizi GNU/Linux 
http://www.milug.org               | http://xelera.it
mailto:giovanni.biscuolo at milug.org | mailto:g at xelera.it           
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