(The GPL software license logo).

In my opinion, the GPL software license is the greatest software license in existence. It is in the best interest of software end users and software developers alike. For those who have no idea what I'm even talking about, the GPL software license allows computer software to be freely available, freely modified, and freely distributed. You can not take a piece of GPL software and turn it into proprietary software either, it has to remain free. This way you are not suddenly roped into paying for something you have come to enjoy having free access to.

I don't know about you, but I like free. Free as in the freedom to do whatever you want! I don't like downloading software that is *cough* free and having to worry about getting caught and going to jail. I just want it to be free period. You might think "well if all software was free then how would companies be able to exist and pay their developers, distributors, and support people". The answer is simple. If companies cared more about writing innovative/high quality software versus writing a heaping pile of crap full of bugs, then end users would be more willing to pay for the software and less likely to try to get it for *cough* free, hence saving companies from loosing TONS of money to software piracy. I need to get that cough checked! Ha ha!

A good example of what I am talking about is companies that operate on donations. These companies have to work really hard to produce quality products and/or services that people will really enjoy, otherwise they won't get paid a dime. Think of all the crappy software you have ever downloaded on your computer that has made it unstable, crashed, or even worse... gave you a virus! Now imagine those same software developers giving away their software for free and asking for donations if you liked their work. Guess who would be out of a job! You see, if all companies gave away their software the world would only have really high quality software programs to deal with and not all the crap. Sure, even a successful donation based company might not make billions and billions of dollars, but they would probably make millions and that's enough right? When you start making billions that's when you get lazy and start producing crap again.

Posted by Dustin Cowell in Programming on 01/17/2010 at 12:32 AM

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