----- Original message ----- From: "Isaac Atilano" <aristophrenic at warpmail.net> To: "Dan Armbrust" <daniel.armbrust.list at gmail.com> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:41:03 -0600 Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Linux, GPL, Source code, and use? On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:14:21 -0600, "Dan Armbrust" <daniel.armbrust.list at gmail.com> said: > > Also, you have left an important aspect out of all of the arguing over > what is better. What if your goal is to have standards? When I > worked in the Mayo Clinic informatics division we wouldn't touch the > GPL - because we wanted our code to be free to everyone - profit or > non-profit. Our goal was to standardize the way that everyone > accessed terminologies. If we couldn't get the commercial companies > involved with our standards, then we were dead in the water. We used > the Apache license (and later, the Eclipse Public License) - > specifically because they allowed commercial use of the code - without > requiring you to open your own code. This allowed us to have > interactions with companies such as IBM - they provided a lot of > support to us in debugging some issues on DB2 - because they wanted to > be able to use our code. GPL code IS free for everyone, profit and non-profit. It doesn't make sense that you avoid GPL so that your code can be free to everyone. You can make your code as free as you want without IBM's cooperation. It seems what you want here is cooperation with IBM so that more people can use your code not so your code can be free.