[Gambas-user] Re: Licence program writed in Gambas.

[Rob]

On Sunday 26 June 2005 16:41, jcostello at ...903... wrote:
> That is a thing I really do not understand. You use a GPL software
> for your program, and then YOUR program becomes GPL, with all its

Well, if you're using someone else's program in your program, it's not 
really your program at all, is it?  The end result is a program 
that's yours and the other guy's.

> implications (free, you cannot make money with it, and have to

I have made tens of thousands of dollars writing GPL software, maybe 
even hundreds of thousands after so long; I do it almost full-time, 
and I think it's safe to say it's my living.

> release the source code). This really restricts the developers who
> can be aided by free software. I think that the word "free" means

There's a park down the street from where I live, which is free for 
everyone to use.  If I were to build a new swing set in that park, it 
would become part of the park.  I wouldn't be able to restrict 
people's use of it unless I built it somewhere other than that free 
park, such as my own backyard.  The collective mass of available GPL 
code is like that park.... improve it all you like, but before you do 
so, be aware that you're improving it for everyone, not just 
yourself.  I've always found that to be a fair tradeoff.

> you can do anything you want with the software, even selling it,
> making money with it, obviously mentioning the people who
> programmed the parts you used.

It sounds like you would be more comfortable with the original BSD 
license, which required nothing other than attribution; I would 
encourage you to release your own software under that license, if 
this is the case, assuming you write all of it yourself or only use 
other people's BSD-licensed or public domain code.  I release my own 
software under the GPL because I can derive more benefit from a 
growing base of free software than from unit sales.

Having previously worked for a company that was so paranoid about 
piracy that I ended up spending more time developing features to lock 
code to particular clients' computers and prevent them from giving it 
to their competition (like they actually would) than developing the 
actual code itself, I'm very happy with how things have turned out so 
far.  Gambas has only made me more efficient, and I suspect that as 
it becomes more popular there'll be a huge pool of Gambas code that 
new people can draw from in a way that's not available to, for 
example, VB users.

Rob