Microsofts new way of bashing Linux

[Andrew Zajac]

On 6/16/06, Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> The statement above was, and I quote: "The GPL is there to protect your intellectual
> property."
>
> Let's take the use case you've provided.  I make a super-keen sound system
> for Linux (to drag in another thread just to be a more effective troll).  I
> GPL it.  How, exactly, does the GPL protect my "intellectual property"?  Be
> specific.
>

 But the term "intellectual property" can mean a lot of things.  In this
example, it is used to describe the software.  You are claiming the software
as your's.  You can do that *and* release it under the GPL.  Isn't that what
copyleft is?

But you can't release it under the GPL and keep it proprietary.

If you released your sound system for Linux under a proprietary licence,
probably nobody would use it and probably no one would hire you to write
more code for it.

If you released it under a BSD-style licence, someone could very well
improve upon your code, but they could also change the licence and prevent
you from benefiting from the improvements.  This would shut you out of your
own code.

While releasing it under the GPL does not ensure that you will always be the
the one that hardware vendors seek out to hire, it certainly allows you a
better opportunity to do so.


>  (Hint: it doesn't.  It takes my "intellectual property" and makes it
> something anybody can use for any purpose whether I approve of it or not;
> whether I profit from it or not.)
>


I guess you'd better make sure that hardware vendors come to you instead of
some other shmo to write drivers for their new device.  How else would you
make money from writing a sound architecture for the linux kernel?

You would have the advantage over others since you wrote the thing.

And why should you have to approve of changes made downstream anyway?  If
they want to fork, let them fork.  Why doesn't forking happen all that
often?

 Now had you, you know, bothered to continue reading before jerking your
> knee, you'd have spotted the bit where I said that I don't even necessarily
> disapprove of this state of affairs.
>

I must have missed that.



>  I just disapprove of people talking about how the GPL protects
> intellectual property when it, in fact, does exactly the opposite.  The GPL
> eliminates the whole *concept* of intellectual property (except as
> communal property).
>

"I created it, it's mine.  You can have it if you want it.  Just share it if
you use it."

How does that not work?



azz
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