Re: Recommendation for a CL data structures library

[RG]

In article <ho7v0o$rfv$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
 Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> 
 wrote:

> On 2010-03-21 22:14:30 -0400, Pascal J. Bourguignon said:
> 
> > Sure.
> > 
> > And the question remains why you should imposes your choices on me?
> 
> Not only am I not imposing anything on you, I've already offered to pay 
> you for a commercial license. So you can have your cake (GPL licensing) 
> and eat it too (paid commercial licensing).
> 
> My principal objection to the GPL is that its license requirements 
> regarding opening source code make it very unpopular with many 
> commercial developers, and therefore whenever possible, they choose 
> non-GPL alternatives.

That's a much better way of putting it than your original formulation.

> In short, I don't think GPL licensing gets you anything additional in 
> terms of getting code open sourced.

...

> I think people should avoid GPL licensing their work as a pragmatic 
> means of ensuring maximal adoption.

Here is where you are imposing your choices on others.  Not everyone 
shares this quality metric of yours.  Some people have goals other than 
insuring maximal adoption, like, oh, I don't know, making money for 
example.  Such people might want to use the copyright laws not to force 
others to create open-source software but to create artificial scarcity 
in order to drive up prices.  One can argue whether or not this strategy 
will be effective.  One can argue (as Stallman does) that one ought not 
choose this quality metric for moral or political reasons.  But neither 
the quality metric nor the strategy are unreasonable a priori.

rg