| Your original post implies that this is a barrier to entry. It is a barrier to entry. I provided one example, there are many others. Try participating in the OpenJDK development process. At every turn, you'll find that administering copyright assignment is, bluntly, a gigantic pain in the ass. As you already noted, it's nearly impossible to put the cat back in the bag, if you fail to do this to begin with. So you're suggesting that I can't sell support/services for my 'law firm software' because the paralegal/lawyers that are actually using it on their company desktops will not be paying out of pocket for services? Huh? No. I'm saying that consumers won't buy services for consumer software. If you're selling enterprise support services, you're not selling consumer software to consumers. No one is forcing you to. I'm not being 'Pro-GPL' here I'm just poking holes in your argument. A standard argument for the GPL is that you can (should?) sell services, not software. In your original post you seem to be applying that to all software that someone might choose to make GPL. If you write software within a narrow band (enterprise, requires support, sold to non-technical organizations) you might be able to make the GPL work for you. Like I said originally: "lots of silly caveats". |
IIRC, Samba requires you to assign over rights to contribute. Maybe take a look at their process.
While I will admit that I have no experience with large projects like OpenJDK, I'll venture a guess that the larger a project gets (and/or the more submissions it gets) that harder it is to manage.
GPL is not always realistic with out side effects, but that doesn't mean it's never realistic either (or that it can't be done if you accept the side effects).