[Freeswitch-users] GPL Wins Again

[Michael Collins]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Madovsky <infos at madovsky.org> wrote:

> its' also an excellent way for big companies to avoid
> to pay employees to make all the dev work also....
>

Indeed it is. Most of us in the OSS world say, "So what?" We've given our
work away for "free" in return for other considerations: free advertising,
free distribution (via Internet downloads), bragging rights, and growing a
software-based ecosystem that allows us to tap into other revenue streams
like private consulting or even writing a book. If big companies "take" our
stuff and use it then they're growing the ecosystem. The choice of OSS
licenses available to us gives us the necessary protection from large
corporations hijacking our stuff. (This includes things like CC for
documents, photos, sounds/music, etc.)

A lot of OSS is so good that corporations that use it find that they need
more of it. Some of them hire community members as consultants or employees.
It can frequently be a win-win scenario, and even when it isn't, it is still
better than the lose-lose scenario of closed/proprietary lock-down.

OSS has WAY more upside than downside.

-MC
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