[openip] Re: GNU License for Hardware

[David Johnson]

On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Bruce Perens wrote:
> It makes sense that the end-user in general would prefer a "do anything
> you want" license.  The important point is that the _author_ often
> doesn't prefer this license, and since one of the most sensitive areas
> of Open Source is providing the author an incentive to write for no pay,
> we have to listen to their license preferences.

If Open Source is going to be used extensively by commercial concerns, then the
needs of the consumer must be taken into account. Grocers don't make a living
selling only the foods they like personally.

> Going by the freshmeat announcements, GPL is extremely popular. On any day,
> more than half of the announcements refer to GPL software. I'm assuming that
> _active_ free software projects have been registered on freshmeat. 

Scanning freshmeat announcements, one only gets a snapshot of what orginal
developers prefer. It is blind as to what downstream developers or end users
want. As Linux progresses beyond the "by hackers for hackers" stage, I think
you'll see the freshmeat numbers slowly change.

-- 
David Johnson
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