Everybody has heard about GPL license but actually most people are afraid when we ask them to free their code under GPL license for all the community.
If we don’t agree to license your programmes under GPL, please tell me your reasons because I hope, if you read this you wouldn’t have any.
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Why GPL?
GPL( GNU General Public License) is a kind of license about the intellectual property
in which we require that all the developments made under GPL license must be GPL.
The way is to protect the unhidden code. Is it only that? I’ll try to answer to
this question right now.
Computer science and more specially programming is a science too, as
chemistry, physics and mathematics. Even if we don’t want to admit it, we don’t
have done too much from the beginning. It is hard to admit but the
most important part of the computer science, the software, has not evoluated
so much.
From the first PC, twenty years ago, users always ask for the same thing.
They want the software that substitutes the writting machine, the software that
substitutes the cash register. Twenty years ago people used to solve problems
for the small and medium bussiness with machines that print tickets, with TSP
(terminal selling points), Netware in DOS, with accountancy programmes and it
didn’t matter what king of programming nor your objects technollogy nor the way
you worked but twenty years later we have the same problems with the same
customers. Those problems have been resolved by our ancestors.
For instance, it is the same as a doctor who finds a medecine against the
cancer and uses it only on his patients but wouldn’t share it amongst the others.
It is to say that if medecine evoluated as the same way as programming we would
find us looking for curing leprosy, plague, malaria or goiter. Wouldn’t we!
But medecine evoluate physics and genetic too, they evoluate
because they share their advances of course. People know that it is a lose
of time to find a solution and then to let the others ones spending ten more
years looking for the same solution at the same problem.
Could you imagine a world in which penicillin had died the same day as
Fleming died ? Could you imagine a world in which only British
people could be saved from the death because Fleming who was British, has
discovered the penicillin in 1928 ? It seems ridiculous isn’t it? How could
anybody want to hide a such discovery only for money? Could you even imagine
if he dies without sharing his discovery. Could we wait ten more years until
somebody else rediscovered it?
Well it seems all right when we are speaking about medecine but why
dont’t we think the same way when we are speaking about programing? What’s the
matter? Why doesn’t exist an accountancy available for all the humanity?Why
doesn’t exist a free disclosure invoiced management ? Perhaps we are
condemned to write the same code as our parents and grand-parents?
While we keep behaving like that, with those building ideals
of closed, secret, hidden and protected applications, that nobody can read them
or learn from our achievements we will be condemned to court failure. Software
evolution is impossible if we don’t understand that we have to share our global
solutions with the others.
GPL license tries to show us the way to follow to go up to the evolution.
Evolution means to share the solutions we find. In fact, license is like a
moral trap. If you adopt a programme under GPL license, well you have
unterstood the right way to follow but please don’t forget and always remenber
that what you do, you must share it with the others. That is the GPL real
meaning.
Now, we have constituted a small team of programmers to show with facts in
spite of words to the others which is the way to follow. BulmaGes is born
to be the first managing application under GPL license. Most of our
members work in managing software marketing in according with customers wishes.
That is why some people are afraid of this kind of license because they think it
is self-defeating.
The unsafety of gift not returned
We wonder if it is right that we spend a whole year in our life to create
a product and somebody who only wastes ten minutes could make a product and sell
it to our potential customers.
Of course this person hasn’t invested so he could sell it cheaper or even
give it free. In fact this person has got all the sources, he can give support
to the product, what would happen if he changes it or if he improves it. So he
would create a product better than mine in only one month, only because he stole
my one year work… No! remember the GPL condition! “ If you take
advantage of my work I will take advantage of your work.” I prefer
reading this in a fair way : ” grateful to the progress I could reach, I
wish my progress could help you to make a better software.”
We all know that people are self-centered, we go on with the theme “if
you bleed me, I will bleed you” At the end it is the universal doubt: What
will happen if the laws are not respected ? It is to say what would happen
if someone takes a far-reaching GPL product and he uses it to make an
inaccessible, illegible, propietary software.
A few days ago somebody asks how to protect us from people who don’t
respect the GPL license.
The answer is easy, we don’t have to protect us because these people are
the victims.
We use the word victim to speak about a person or a society that
hasn’t spent five minutes to obtain a software application. That application
would cost 100.000$ a few months ago. We save 100.000$ to our competence, they
don’t say thank you to us and we dare to call them: victims.
It seems we are looking for beatification, aren’t we? Could you unterstand us?
couldn’t you!
First we had the case in which people take and respect the GPL license. In
this case if our managing application is adapted for a wood society,
we have got a product for wood society without spending time nor money studying
the market. But we have increased our posible customers with adapted
managing that haven’t been resolved by ourselves but resolved.
Second we had the case in which people don’t take and don’t respect the
GPL license. It is the case of people who take a GPL product and distribuate
it as a propietary code. In this case they dig their own grave because the
software is alive and they take the software but they don’t they don’t give it
again to the community, so these people won’t benefit from the help of the
community. After a time these people had to forget the product and they
had to sell the GPL product only because they wouldn’t improve it like any
GPL product would be by programmers all over the world. But this people
would have an propietary product sold but they couldn’t improve it copying again
the GPL product because a GPL release gets better and better everyday. These
people would get unsatisfied customers with obsolate software that didn’t answer
the market demand. In the other way, the licensed GPL software is up to day and
it is obvious to say that the people who share their knowledge have a place in
the market by their own deserts.
What would happen if everybody sells the same GPL product? Would it
be the end of the market?
All the bars sell the same snacks, hasn’t this ended with the competence
against snackbars? The same happens with the universal products. The penicellin
is universal, every society, every country distribuates it and sells it as well
as they want and this doesn’t end with chemistry business.What about the Coke
formula, it is known by everybody, have a look in google open cola. The same
must happen with the software. The Bulmages could be the same everywhere, but
the service would be different. We don’t have to worry because our neighbors
sell the same product as us, we have to worry that our neighbors don’t sell it
better, that they don’t treat the customers better than us, that they don’t
offer more added values than us.
Free: Free or Gratis ?
We have to focus on two points. One will stay and the other will die. The one
that will die is the one of Microsoft, the shared-source. It is to
say that the codes of MS applications will not be secret, you could read them
but only if we pay for it. And of course the one who pays to read the codes
cannot let the others read them if they don’t have paid for the codes. This
point of view is the one we call the segmentation of the market. In MS they know
that they will knuckle under the OpenSource because in five years time Linux has
improved much more than Windows in twenty years and they are afraid. But
in MS they know how to make money, so while they wait for the day, they have to
free their code, MS is going on selling the product to make money to those
gullible people who go on with an operating system that “freeze” on
their desk a long time ago.
The other point of view is the open-source, it is to say that people
who want to read the code, to compile it or to execute the code just have to do
it. But people can’t charge the customer for something given free for all
the humanity. So we can’t speak about a sale of Bulmages as we can’t
speak about a sale of Linux. We only sell the added value, books, support,
attention to the custumer, personification….
Ideas and programmes that give a solution to universal themes must belong to
humanity property, it is the only way to treat better our customers, the only
way not to spend time resolving the same problem years after years, the only way
no to take money to resolve the same problem but take money to resolve every
time a different problem . That the way to make our job better and our life more
pleasant.
The one who hasn’t unterstood that GPL license and Open Source are the
only ways to improve the software programing world it would be too late to
become aware of it.
To adopt GPL license and to distribuate applications based on
OpenSource wouldn’t be an alternative to become soon, the only way to stay alive
in the market.
License your code under GPL or don’t do it and carry on with the
consequences of your decision.Lista de enlaces de este artículo:
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