Free Software (was : Re: Linux for small business)

[Kevin Buettner]

On Apr 28,  3:05pm, Tom Achtenberg wrote:

> I read as much as I could stand of the gnu philosophy.  In essence it says I
> am NOT FREE to own what I create

Not true.  So long as you are the copyright holder, you are free to license
your software under whatever terms that you want.  Of course, if you choose
to offer your software under the terms of the GPL, that does mean that your
software is "out there" and folks can modify as they please so long as they
observe the terms of the license.  (One of the key terms is that they
make their changes to your code available.)

However, so long as you are the copyright holder, you are still free to
license your software under other terms.  E.g, if you've created a library,
your use of the GPL will encourage others who use the library to make their
works free too.  (The terms of the GPL require this.)  BUT, if they don't
wish to make their source freely available, they can purchase a license
from you which doesn't require this.  

> but everyone else is FREE to consume and
> take the fruits of my labor without compensating me at all.

You're thinking of the BSD license.  The GPL requires that any
modifications to your code also be made public.  This prevents a
commercial organization from picking up your code, modifying it for
their own purposes without also releasing their changes.  This, BTW,
is the primary reason that Microsoft doesn't mind the BSD license,
but hates the GPL.  (They can't make proprietary modifications to
GPL'd code, but they can to code licensed under a BSD license.)

If you're referring to the fact that someone can pick up a package
that you've written and use if for whatever purposes that they want
without paying you, then what you say is true.  However, if your work
is at all significant, and they're a serious user, then it may be
cheaper for them to pay you for support than it would be to do the
support internally.

Kevin