On 01/05/2011 02:05 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 13:44 +0530, Shamit Verma wrote:
So that people who benefit from your efforts "have to" contribute back by giving access to source code for the enhancements.
the idea of *forcing* people to contribute is repugnant to me. They should have the freedom to choose whether to contribute back or not. BSD gives them the choice.
The subtle thing about the GPL requirement is you are not *forced* to contribute back if decide not to redistribute. The core principle here is extend to your users the same courtesy that you received -- which IMHO is not a repugnant idea.
Philosophy aside tho', even engineering wise, it is more efficient when people contribute back since one does not spend time reinventing (reimplementing?) the (improved) wheel.
Case in point, OSX. Linux/BSD do not have a desktop environment comparable to OSX. OSX is developed on top of BSD. If BSD license had terms similar to Linux, Apple would have had to provide source code for enhancements. With that, Linux would have benefited from a better user experience.
I have used OSX for nearly three years and can testify that their desktop environment sucks big time compared to linux - no great loss.
I could twist this into a variety of other flames (like KDE Vs Gnome) ...but am too old for it now :)
cheers, - steve