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From: Jan Atle Ramsli <trollet@skynet.be>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Re: Mjolner 5.2.2, Bravo & praise.
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 09:39:52 +0200
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Arne Hueggenberg wrote:
>
> 
> Actually, publishing old Versions Under the GPL is not so terrific an Idea.
> Leaving the Free Software Ethics out of the Discussion and coming from the
> Open Source Angle publishing this would counteract most of the benefits one
> could hope to garner from a move like this. Bugfixes users of the old version
> might develop might already have been developed for the 'Commercial Verison'
> thus leading to duplication of effort. Additinal libraries developed for the
> old version might not work with the 'Commercial Version', etc

Assuming that that the released system is supposed to be 'Mjolner',
sure.
But this is not what I tried to say, I guess I tried to say too much in
a too awkward way.

Releasing the old mjolner system under GPL would totally cut the strings
metween mjolner and the system.

Lets say the GPL system was called Midgard.

Midgard is not supposed to benefit from gugfixes and improvements from
Mjolner, the intention behind giving something away should not be to
force oneself to give away even more :-)

The intention must be the inverse: That Mjolner benefits from bugfixes
and improvements to the Midgard tool, excluding of course, the bugfixes
they have already made themselves.

What this would do, would be making it easier to get some economical
benefit:

A bugfix does no longer _Have_ to happen at the Mjolner site, it can
come from anywhere, as long as it is relevant to the current release.

A BSD or Linux-Alpha version of the compiler could be developed by
anyone.

And all this can happen while maintaining a commerical version of the
Mjolner software, since all the 'free stuff' comes from Midgard!

It sounds like a good idea, but it is not rellay mine, of course, lots
of companies do similar things ...

The important thing would have to be making the 'free' stuff 'really
free' while maintaining the potential for making money on the system.


Atle