Main difference between moz, oo, and helix == GPL [LWN.net]

Main difference between moz, oo, and helix == GPL

Posted Apr 22, 2003 4:50 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
In reply to: Main difference between moz, oo, and helix != GPL by jensend
Parent article: An apology from Novell's CEO

Cathederals and Bazaars. What a crap book, it has more nutritional value
than educational value. heh ;)

> The difference is in how open the projects are

I agree, but I say that GPL *is* openness. The NPL was kinda
open, the MPL was pretty open, the GPL put an end to all closedness.

No company is going to hire a programmer to work on code someone else
releases under the NPL, or probably the MPL. Once it was announced that
Mozilla would go GPL, companies were no longer afraid to pay coders to
work on it. The GPL levels the playing field. Completely.

It's no surprise that OpenOffice found it slow to build a developer
community. It's 9 million lines of C++, and the file/directory layout is
hOrrIBle. Throw in a lack of modularity and you find few people can even
compile it more than once per day.

Mozilla is 1 million lines. I haven't looked at the code but the Netscape
guys had a pretty good reputation. Also, in 1998, a web-browser was *the*
most requested piece of Free Software. That made it sexy to work on.

As for RealHelix? Their business model probably couldn't stand up to
openness. Their main selling point is a monopolly on a data format.

Ciaran O'Riordan

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Main difference between moz, oo, and helix != GPL

Posted Apr 22, 2003 16:09 UTC (Tue) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]

The GPL *is not* openness. Why do you think the GCC/EGCS saga happened? Because the GCC team was a fairly closed team, as were most of the GNU teams in the mid 90s.

If you look at the Mozilla project, the move to a GPL tri-license didn't change much at all. There was not a noticeable change in the number of people working on it when they moved to tri-license. Your comment that no company would pay to have people work on MPL licensed stuff doesn't make any sense at all. The MPL is almost functionally identical to the LGPL.

Linux-related forums are always clogged by people who think the GPL is some sort of cure-all, demanding that everybody in the world release under the GPL. These people don't have any idea what they're talking about.

Main difference between moz, oo, and helix != GPL

Posted Apr 23, 2003 15:50 UTC (Wed) by babrew (guest, #9862) [Link]

> The GPL *is not* openness. Why do you think the GCC/EGCS saga happened?
> Because the GCC team was a fairly closed team, as were most of the GNU
> teams in the mid 90s.

Why being GPL-licensed software means that developer team has to be closed ?

Is it GPL's fault ?

I have seen "fairy closed" developer teams on BSD-licensed projects...

Main difference between moz, oo, and helix != GPL

Posted Apr 23, 2003 16:37 UTC (Wed) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]

No, no, no. I'm not saying that using the GPL ensures closed development; that's obviously wrong. I'm just saying the GPL doesn't ensure open development. My statement that the GPL is not openness and counterexamples mean "not (GPL implies openness) and not (openness implies GPL)", not "GPL implies not openness".