Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Sunday 15 May 2005 08:06, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
...
I second the sentiment about incentive to bust a gut doing something original, then having to give it away, and your conclusion about amateur status as well. I suspect that is why the LPGL (which I never heard of before you brought it up :-) ) came about. I don't think anyone will come after you for basing something on Motif & selling it, though. You could buy a cheap Octane on Ebay (& IRIX ROMs as well, all legal) & you would be free to develope Motif apps to your hearts content. You could also claim that that's how you developed the app & I suspect nobody would be the wiser. That is essentially what I do ;-), develope on SGI's, port to Linux, & off to the races.
If you want to take total credit and profit for software you write, write it _all_ yourself. And I do mean all of it: the compilers, the libraries, the operating system, the device drivers, the utilities and every last little thing you use. By no means should you in any way avail yourself of any open source software. Then you can sell your prize creation for anything you want. Of course, you'll be left in the dust by all the other developers who are willing to abide by open source licenses and can thus benefit by the fruits of collective effort.
If you're such a Randian, hyper-individualistic "self-made man", then you really have to do it all. Take on _all_ aspects of creation and don't rely on any other freely shared work of others. You really ought not use any public resources at all: No public schooling, no public libraries, nor any access, direct or indirect, to any of the science and technology produced by publicly funded efforts. Otherwise, you're just another greedy Libertarian hypocrite.
Randall Schulz
Or .... avail yourself of software without the entanglements of GPL, which was my point ;-). -- William A. Mahaffey III --------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember, ignorance is bliss, but willful ignorance is LIBERALISM !!!!