Re: Thought provoking piece on NetBSD

On 2/9/2006 4:11, "Scott Marlowe" <smarlowe(at)g2switchworks(dot)com> wrote:

> I think that with either the GPL or BSD, code is returned under a type
> of coercion. Not necessarily a bad thing, understand.
>
> The coercion of the GPL is legalistic. If you distribute GPL stuff,
> you've got to give out the source code with it. So, you might as well
> give it to the community at large. With BSD, it's more that you'd be
> cutting yourself off from the community at large if you didn't return
> the code. So, the coercion is much more subtle. It's much easier to
> donate your code to the project and let other people maintain it then to
> try and maintain your own fork of the code and cross patch their changes
> into your own.

The GPL *forces* you to release your source code where the BSD license gives
you the option to choose what you want to do with your work. Free choice is
a good way to get co-operation where forcing would normally get a negative
response. That's just general human behaviour.

With the BSD license if you want an advantage in the market you can add your
own features/improvements and hold on to them to make your product stand
out.

6 or 12 months down the line when the competition starts to catch up or you
have a good position in the market you can then share your earlier
improvements if you choose to, or just share some of them.

> I generally find the BSD license easier to sell to bosses, for sure.

It can be a good selling point to business folk - that they aren't forced to
share the work that they paid for. The old hold on to corporate secrets.

When you get them working on it you then sell them the idea of sharing their
work to get a good code review and broad testing to ensure quality and
stability.

--

Shane Ambler
Postgres(at)007Marketing(dot)com

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