Lets think of Licenses a little bit like DNA/RNA.
On Sat, Mar 07, 2015 at 11:37:16AM -0500, Yoni Rabkin wrote:
>
> It's a matter of perspective.
>
> To someone who wants proprietary software, copyleft is a restriction. To
> someone who want freedom, copyleft is a protection.
>
> To someone who wants proprietary software, lax licenses are an
> opportunity. To someone who fears proprietary software, lax licenses are
> a vulnerability.
>From the gitlab vs gitorious thread, I think this sums it up
beautifully.
Now imagine you have a single celled organism.
On the one hand, you have a propri(etary) cell, which accumulates
resources for itself, and gets very big and fat.
On the other hand you have a libre cell, which accumulates resources,
but then splits/forks, sharing them with it's sisters or children.
In the short term, the propri cell looks like it is winning,
because it's so big, and fat, can easily crowd out the libre cell,
and even steal it's resources, food/water/sunlight.
in the long term the propri cell dies, but the libre cells live on.
permisive BSD licences start out as a libre cell, but they have no
protection against mutation, so their sisters/forks may lose
reproductive capacity, so eventually they likely will die also.
a GPL libre cell has a strong DNA/RNA fixing algorithm, which makes
certain that the sister/forks have reproductive capacity, even if they
mutate in otherways, thus insuring long term viability.
Just as in the primordial ooze, we have propri-accumulators, and
libre-reproducers, in the long term, we know who won in cells,
so we can be confident we of the copyleft are the winning side.
only other parts we should work on, is working on ways for libre-cells
to feed themselves as well as their propri-cell brethren. donations
clearly aren't the way to go, so there has to be active seeking,
idea screens, feasability analysis, business plans, corporation,
can easily be non-profit, and pay employees, have surpluses for
expansion, funding sister cells.
> "Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"
good quote :-).
--
Logan