> Larry McVoy wrote:
> > These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is ever
> > going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with commercial companies.
>
> The problem is that you can't trust a company. You may choose to
> trust people who control or shape a company, but they may lose
> that control, and then all bets are off.
And that is exactly _the_ argument in this whole discussion. There seem to be
people out there who want to make a living from _others_ _ancient_ work they
bought for small bucks by sueing just about anyone.
GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term, Larry.
That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am able to use it
as is in five years from now. If I depend on being nice to commercial
companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to me no matter
what I do.
In other words: it's all about being free or being dependant on goodwill.
Greets to the land of the free and the home of the brave,
Stephan
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