[PLUG] SCO Clarification

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Robert Kopp wrote:
> > "The world, especially here in America, is shifting to one that is an
> > information society," McBride said. "In the future, is that $229 billion
> > in software still going to be there? Or in the case of the Free Software
> > Foundation's goal, is proprietary software going to go away?"

McBride seems to be stating simply the goal of the Free Software
Foundation and it's a fairly accurate depiction of one of that
organization's goals.  I fully support that goal, by the way.

>   The answer is a resounding "no" regardless of whether the software is
> proprietary or sold under the GPL.

Huh?!?  To which question is your resounding "no" the answer?

"Is that $229 billion in software still going to be there?"
"no"

Logically, this would have to be what you meant, but then you go on to
write about software profiteers as though they are the future rather than
relics of the past that will eventually fade away.  So it's totally
contradictory.

"Is proprietary software going to go away?"
"no"

This can't be what you mean because you write "whether the software is
proprietary or sold under the GPL".  Software distributed under the GPL
(by trade or share) is in no way proprietary.

> There are numerous solid, value-filled applications for linux that are
> proprietary and cost money; e.g., VMware.

UML seems to have filled that niche pretty nicely, I'd say.  Other systems
will surely be developing compatible user mode equivalencies and VMware
will go out of business.  Hope you don't depend on the software for
anything critical else you might get stuck with a piece of software that
is unmaintained and unmaintainable.

> Also, there's nothing in the GPL that prevents an application being sold
> (e.g., Red Hat's distribution, Slackware's distribution, SuSE's
> distribution) with source and the GPL.

Well, no, but how many copies are you going to sell when the folks who buy
it can and will simply put it on their website/DAV/P2P system and share it
freely?

There is no value in information already recorded.  The value is in
recording new information.  (I use this loosely to also encompass the
re-ordering of existing information in non-trivial ways.)  Once it is
recorded, it can be shared freely and all can benefit from it.  People
will be paid for producing new work (mostly via modifications of existing
work, of course) and providing services rather than simply redistributing
bits.  We've got a nice bit distribution system and it doesn't need to be
artificially restricted to promote an archaic business model.

J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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