Re: [guppi-list] Re: Goose numerics licensing update

["Asger Alstrup Nielsen" <alstrup diku dk>]

> The GSL team is flexible about using GPL or LGPL, but we want to hear
> a better case presented than "I'm writing a non-free app, so please
> LGPL your stuff for me".

I've convinced my management to consider to use LGPL software as a component in
the commercial application, we are developing.  (This was not easy, but that's
probably irrelevant.)  Goose is close to being something we would like to use,
and therefor I lobbied here to keep Goose LGPL.  In return, I promised to work
on Goose, most prominently in the area of non-parametric statistics.  This work
will go right back to the open source community.

So it's a deal in both directions:  My company will hopefully profit from the
existing
code-base and future development in Goose.  That's why we want to use it. 
However, the open source community will also profit from this:  The features
that we implement will be free.  It seems that mr. Jon Trowbridge judged that
the potential benefits of using LGPL outweighted the extra trouble, and I'm
happy that he did.

--

I've presented my best case to my co-workers and my management to adopt Goose
in our work, and help develop it further, to the combined benefit of ourselves
and the open source community.  At this point in time, I'm waiting for their
decision.  I'm crossing my fingers that they will decide to support Goose,
because personally I'd prefer to work on open source code, rather than closed
source. I believe that the open source development model is the only right one.
Freedom and sharing is right.
However, I'm not to decide these things; the decision is up to my management. 
They have to decide between a closed, propertiary library that boast many
features, but no real flexibility, and the less developed, but flexible open
source Goose on the other hand.
The price is not an important issue in either case:  We don't have to pay any
royalties to use the commercial library in our final application.  So it's a
one-time investment, and compared to the amount of man-hours that we need to
work on it to get it useful for us is way more expensive (all commercial
libraries are buggy).  The amount of hours that we have to spend on Goose is
probably similar, except that we have much more control of the result, since we
can change the code.  We have better guarantees that the software we develop is
correct, and this is important to us.

> I'll say more when I have time to read through that email with greater 
> care: it might be that some better arguments for LGPLing exist.

IMO, there is a more serious problem with GPL than the fact that commercial use
is prohibited:  Libraries under the GPL are not be usable in open source
applications linked with Motif, Qt, XForms or any other closed toolkit.  That
is a severe restriction that goes against the open source idea as I understand
it.  The open source idea as I understand it is not about money, or no money. 
It's about freedom, security, and stability.

Yes, to some individuals it is a problem that companies indirectly will make
money from your open source work, while you don't get any money yourself.  In a
similar way, one can argue that companies like RedHat and SUSE are earning
money from your work, without you getting any back.  But we tend to accept
this, because RedHat and SUSE help spread the word.  
I think that opening up software to be useful in commercial applications, as
with the LGPL, will do the same.  And with potential more impact, because
commercial companies have much more money and power than the ordinary user.

Greets,

Asger Alstrup Nielsen