>
> > I see it more as an inevitable response to some vicious and sustained
> > attacks by a small number of huge, disreputable commercial interests with
> > very large and well funded legal teams against altruistic individuals and
> > groups without the necessary financial backing to fight back.
>
> Nay. It may have started that way, but from what I see now, it has gone
> overboard.
>
> For the cause of protecting free software developers' rights against commercial
> piracy, in the case of libraries I see no valid reason to require that *all*
> parts of commercial software must be open sourced if they use that library -
> except for "political" purposes.
>

What has been termed as viral marketing is a protection mechanism for
"transparency". In theory I have no problem with people charging for software
(although I personally perfer to support open source by using it solely).
However as people have pointed out piracy comes in many forms. When a
commercial entity uses an open source library, even if they they make available
the library, they are still benefiting monetarily off of the good intentioned
work of others. A less apparent method would involve changing around a few
lines of code in the library, at which point the commericial entity calls it
its own. At what point do you say that the commerical entity's version is no
longer a derived work? That's more difficult to say.

If I had no idea how PNG files were read and written, and then after using say a
GPL program that did this, I came up with completely different algorithms for
reading and writing in the PNG format. Even though the code is completely
different is it new? Because Its the difference between having a PNG library
and not having a PNG library should it be considered derived?

Also, let me put forth an argument that is not universal due to the fact that
not everybody has the same set of values and morals. Isn't closed source giving
commerical apps a free ride? Let me try to explain.

Put another way alot of people trade MP3s over the internet. I don't because its
wrong (not a universal attitude) and I could go to jail (still not universal but
alot more accepted). I purchase from say iTunes even though mp3s are available
for two additional reasons a) commerical formats sound better, b) I wish these
artist to produce more good songs.

Shouldn't (in a perfect world in which I know we do not live)  apps that are
commerical, not be paid for because they are proprietary, but because people
wish to support them, and possibly more relevantly they can do the job better
than the open source version? I feel as though making commercial apps closed
source is essentially giving them a free ride since they are not continually
forced to make revisions and enhancements that make them superior to theire
opensource alternatives?

One final thing I thought I would bring up, there will always be people that
leach off of open source. If you search on ebay for microsoft office you will
see a tone of people selling "alternatives to microsoft office" on cd. While
they only cost a penny, sellers make up for it with "shipping and handling". If
you look you will see that screenshots of these programs are actually those of
openoffice, but without any reference to that offical name. Viral licensing
could be though of as a way to decrease the leaching effect.

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