[ILUG] GPL Bad for Linux? (Link)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Jakma (paul at clubi.ie):
> On Tue, 17 Aug 2004, Frank Murphy wrote:
> 
> >http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2004/tc20040813_1107_tc120.htm
> >
> >Some of it has been gone over, but an interesting slant.
> 
> "<blub> <blub> we cant take GPL code and 'proprietise' it like we can 
> with code under that nice, charming and business-friendly BSD 
> licence."

Actually, they can:  All they have to do is offer a sufficiently
compelling sum of money to all the copyright owners in question, by way
of inducement for a copy under a licence more agreeable to the
prospective buyers.  _Exactly_ as with proprietary software, by the way.
A large number of companies use GPLv2 in precisely that way, from MySQL
AB on down.  But some people prefer to complain their way into a free lunch.

Maybe someone should write to _Business Week_ and Mr. Stephen H.
Wildstrom, columnist, and explain this "capitalism" concept to them.

-- 
Cheers,            There are only 10 types of people in this world -- 
Rick Moen          those who understand binary arithmetic and those who don't.
rick at linuxmafia.com