"We're now more than a decade later than the moment when I judged the open source to have gained a decisive momentum - 1996-1997, when Slackware was the reference, Red Hat was 'the other choice', KDE and GNOME were just emerging, Walnut Creek was selling CD-ROMs, and SunSITE mirrors were the home of most of the relevant software. The worst thing that happened was that Yggdrasil Linux died. But the Earth kept spinning..." Read the rest of the editorial at TheJemReport.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-02-22
Here we go again with one of your lame attempts at FUD
Why do many users here automatically dismiss all criticisms of the GPL/copyleft as "FUD", often with a few personal attacks thrown in, without even any sign that they had considered or even read the arguments presented them?
As to your question, the fact that people are not using GPL software is enormously evident. Windows costs much more than Linux, yet the former is still a multi-billion dollar product and the latter can't even approach the marketshare of Mac OSX. Microsoft Office costs hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars more than Koffice or OpenOffice, and yet the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats are still standard. Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars more than GIMP, yet employers never look for experience in the latter on resumes. The only thing all these products that have not been adopted have in common is the fact that they are licensed under copyleft licenses.
People who see the GPL for what is don't use software licensed under it. Even in those instances when said software can do everything that the proprietary or free program can do, but at the price of $0, people are paying the hundreds or thousands of dollars it takes to be free of GPL code, and they're doing it by the millions. This isn't ignorance -- this is knowing the license.
Member since:
2007-02-22
Again, for those that dislike the license, don't use the software.
Which people seem to be doing more and more every day.