> [OSS] was a cautious attempt to assert a radical idea into an atmosphere of extrem secrecy: That information wants to be free.
Information may want to be free, but users of free information often want to enrich their private endeavors by shackling the information that was given to them freely.
The (A|L)GPL acknowledges the fact that some people and corporations like to use free-and-gratis work in their products and not reciprocate the courtesy shown to them by the authors of that work. (I choose the (L)GPL whenever I can so that folks who derive from my work are either required to either make it available as I have, or pay me enough so that I don't mind them shackling my work.)
The BSD license acknowledges the fact that some people and many corporations like to use gratis work in their closed-source products and never even do so much as bother to credit the authors of work that they used.
For as long as powerful folks continue to use and improve upon gratis information and software without contributing the products that used that information and/or improvements, the 'weird old Victorian ideas of "intellectual property"' are going to have to continue to be dealt with. Remember... you likely cannot reasonably afford an army of lawyers to ensure that pretty much noone uses your work without paying you, but big companies like Microsoft, RedHat, IBM, Oracle, etc, etc, and wealthy individuals can.
For as long as those wealthy entities can lock up and force you to pay for their work and ideas, but make it ruinously expensive for us little people to -individually- do the same to them, we'll need "weird old Victorian" things like licenses to help correct this imbalance of power.
Information may want to be free, but users of free information often want to enrich their private endeavors by shackling the information that was given to them freely.
The (A|L)GPL acknowledges the fact that some people and corporations like to use free-and-gratis work in their products and not reciprocate the courtesy shown to them by the authors of that work. (I choose the (L)GPL whenever I can so that folks who derive from my work are either required to either make it available as I have, or pay me enough so that I don't mind them shackling my work.)
The BSD license acknowledges the fact that some people and many corporations like to use gratis work in their closed-source products and never even do so much as bother to credit the authors of work that they used.
For as long as powerful folks continue to use and improve upon gratis information and software without contributing the products that used that information and/or improvements, the 'weird old Victorian ideas of "intellectual property"' are going to have to continue to be dealt with. Remember... you likely cannot reasonably afford an army of lawyers to ensure that pretty much noone uses your work without paying you, but big companies like Microsoft, RedHat, IBM, Oracle, etc, etc, and wealthy individuals can.
For as long as those wealthy entities can lock up and force you to pay for their work and ideas, but make it ruinously expensive for us little people to -individually- do the same to them, we'll need "weird old Victorian" things like licenses to help correct this imbalance of power.