Alexis de Tocqueville Institution: Patents and the Penguin

“To summarize, the General Public License (GPL), the
contract/license for GNU/Linux software and other open source
software requires distribution of the source code for the original
program. If you receive a copy of GPL’ed
software, you can use it without worrying about the original author
exercising any limitations, fees, licenses, etc. The GPL enables
developers to transfer the rights of their work to anyone they
would like, for the privilege of having the reciprocal use of
GPL’ed work. This feature makes selling
GPL’ed software inane because anyone that
agrees to the terms of the GPL can also have a copy of the same
software with the code–for free.

“However, the dynamic nature of software patenting, something
that cannot be governed directly by the GPL, has made it very
difficult for the future of open source development to play out
predictably…”

Complete
Story