A new source of anti-GPL FUD [LWN.net]

A new source of anti-GPL FUD

Posted Nov 26, 2003 4:13 UTC (Wed) by stefanwagner (guest, #17209)
In reply to: A new source of anti-GPL FUD by rev
Parent article: A new source of anti-GPL FUD

The example want's to show a problem of the company, of getting a buisiness-damage (I'm sorry for my english).

Of course other companies may produce better, cheaper, maybe open source programs, which take the others company customers over.

Think of an baker. Baker man is baking bread.
He's got a good idea of a new kind of bread, is fired, and produces the bread in another bakery for less amount.
Or another company can immitate that bread.

Of course it is a problem for the first company.
But it's not a crime, while no contract guaranteed the unique usage of the idea.

How is it possible, that there isn't just one company producing cars?
Is every engineer a criminal?

If a company includes just a little piece of open source code in their proprietary software, there shouldn't be too much costs, in replacing it by code developped by own programers.
If the open-source is the biggest of the software, the effort in building this software was too small.

Of course, a programmer is responsible for not stealing code - whether open source or not.
Of course it's harder to steal closed source code, but it's not impossible - think about decompilers and dynamic link libraries.

If a company for canned meat, aka spam, solds cans where their stuff included stolen meat they have the same problem.

The lawyers made the fault to assume, that the GPL might be infecting all the other code, mixed with (stolen/ misused) open source.

Of course, if you sold open source, due to a criminal act of your employee, you have to remove the open source code, and find an alternative.
This should be possible for nearly any case.
If this is too expensive, you either stop the projekt, or license it under the GPL.

But a company is responsible for the acts of their stuff.
It may demand compensation from the programer.

That's my opinion.

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