Re: Mathworks-hosted GPL'd software

[Thomas Weber]

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 02:18:45AM +0300, Aleksej Saushev wrote:
> "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > It's unfortunate that this person decided that his best option was to
> > switch to the BSD license, especially given that he thinks that doing
> > so is more likely to result in someone else "paid to write codes"
> > coming along to maintain the code.  I don't know why that wouldn't
> > also happen if the code were distributed under the terms of the GPL.
> > There are plenty of examples of community maintained software
> > distributed under the terms of the GPL, aren't there?
> >
> > It seems more likely that if someone "paid to write codes" has an
> > interest in maintaining his software, they will not hesitate to also
> > relicense the code and make it proprietary with no notice or
> > compensation of any kind to the original author.  That is after all
> > what the MathWorks FAQ about the new licensing scheme tells people is
> > legal and so seems to be encouraging people to do.
> 
> If you're afraid that someone "steals" your code, you shouldn't release it
> at the first place.
> 
> There's simple explanation why it happens so that BSD licensed code
> receives more attention when it comes to maintainance. When you are paid
> to do some work, what code can you reuse to save your time?
> Obviously only the one that is free. "Free" as in "free," not as in "GPL," 
> there's no "free" in "GPL." Thus we spend our time on source code
> distributed under BSD and MIT/X terms rather than GNU terms, we talk
> to original developers and maintainers and contribute to those projects.
> 
> There's very little point in "stealing" what is free. In the most frequent
> case you can't add to it enough value so that you can redistribute it for
> material return. The gain is negligible, if exists at all. Everyone just
> goes and finds the same free code you started from. On the other hand
> you give out bug fixes and other code you don't intend to maintain,
> because all this maintainance takes your time.

I'm eagerly waiting for a BSD-licensed interpreter of .m files with
Octave's quality.  

Shouldn't take too long, following your logic. After all, some of the
libraries used by Octave are licensed under BSD, so there is a starting
point.

        Thomas