A prototype License Wizard up and running

[Russell Nelson]

Bruce Perens writes:
 > Larry doesn't feel that the GPL's reciprocal terms would hold up in 
 > court. Attorneys are divided on this. Rosen: no, Peterson: yes (I 
 > think), Samuelson: "we don't know", Cloud: "I'm looking for an answer 
 > too", Moglen: yes. And we have had one or two preliminary court findings 
 > that say "yes", and one case not concerning the GPL that might say "no", 
 > and the fact that nobody's wanted to be the victim of a test case also 
 > says "yes".

No it doesn't.  If a business is faced with an %X risk of an event
costing them $Y, it makes sense for them to spend up to %X*$Y to
mitigate it.  If you're linksys, and you've assembled a Linux distro
on which to base your routers, it's cheaper to release the code than
to litigate, regardless of the likelihood of winning or losing.  Even
if you have to hire outside engineers to do a release.

 > I reject that business people and developers are different audiences. We 
 > have not been training business people that the GPL is an excellent 
 > vehicle for restraining your competition. Once they understand that, 
 > they do not have so much of a problem with it. They've been viewing the 
 > GPL as if they were always the recipients rather than the grantor.

Users, developers, and distributors are all different audiences.

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