I, Cringely: Open and Shut

“Last week’s WiFi-in-the-sky column generated a lot of reader
interest that we’ll get back to next week, but first I have to
write about an issue I’m tangentially involved in–how people can
and can’t make money from Open Source software distributed under
the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License (GPL).
Sveasoft, the little router firmware company on an island off the
coast of Sweden that I have written about before, switched this
week to requiring paid subscription access to its support forums
and to download beta versions of its firmware releases for running
Linux on various WiFi routers. This change in policy has created a
minor firestorm of nerd indignation that I think is not only
unwarranted, but stems from essential ignorance of both the GPL and
the way businesses are run. It is time for some people to grow
up…”

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