Re: Copyright question

[Sean Conner <sean@...>]

It was thus said that the Great David Kastrup once stated:
> 
> The GPL takes away choice.  But it in a corporate setting, the "choice"
> that is taken away is often not optional: maximizing shareholder value
> _requires_ a company _not_ to voluntarily yield anything which could be
> withheld as a company asset.
> 
  The GPL is "programmer hostile" but "consumer friendly".  As a programmer
that also uses software, I personally love the idea that devices I have that
use GPLed software offer me the opportunity to obtain said software [1] and
modify it to suit my needs.  There are plenty of Linux based wireless
routers, for instance, that I can choose from and modify to suit my needs
(like for instance, removing buffer bloat [2] that wireless router companies
may not immediately support).

  -spc (A friend just today was telling me of the pain his department [3] is
	going through because the system they've been using for twenty years
	[4] is now "past end of life", no longer supported, and thus,
	they're forced to move to yet another proprietary system ... [5])


[1]	For up to three years after obtaining the device---read the GPL.

[2]	http://www.bufferbloat.net/

[3]	He's a city planner for a town.

[4]	An IBM AS-400 for those who are curious.

[5]	Would he be served by GPLed software?  Possibly ... an attempt could
	be made to port it, or at the very least, a way of dumping the data
	out of the system into a vendor-neutral format could be done.