[luau] that crazy GPL stuff...

[R.Scott Belford]

On Wednesday, October 15, 2003, at 06:34 AM, Vince Hoang wrote:

> Cautious vendors that are concerned with intellectual property do
> not need avoid using open-source until a legal precedence is set
> with the GPL. For lots of GPL software, there is usually a BSD
> equivalent.

The folks at Lavanet have created another company that has developed a 
rather impressive and well-designed spam appliance aimed at the 
Corporate sector.  It is based on Open
Source software.  Because they have added proprietary tweaks to the 
product, it is *bsd based.  Consequently, the changes they have made 
remain "theirs."

If intellectual property is not of paramount importance, then GPL 
software is viable.  It all comes down to how one wishes to 
differentiate his product/service.  If service/support/implementation 
are the strengths and revenue-generators of a company, then using GPL 
and releasing any tweaks is more than acceptable.  If one wishes to 
differentiate his product with coding expertise, then starting with 
less restrictive code is probably the better idea.

>
> -Vince

--scott