I do understand the open source movement, in other case I wouldn't ask anything on this thread. It would be easier to take the code, use it and saying or asking nothing to you, like many (yes, many) companies are already doing. So don't judge somebody only because he's made a question to know more about something. We've thought about some way of splitting our project in two or more parts, for example, one using mythtv and released under GPL too, but other separated and independent one that could contain our real own development (the part that really make us different and better than our competitors) and released privately. My question tried to get ideas like this, or ways to do something similar, and to know if it's possible, because if it wasn't, we would try something different and not using mythtv at all.<br>
<br>Please, don't talk about "the community" as a group of people working with the only goal of helping the others, without any kind of profit, that's not like that in a lot of cases. The idea of a single person working at home only because his love for art is very romantic, but not true at all. You should know there are a lot of development groups working on open source projects and receiving public or government subventions, and private too.<br>
<br><i>'Stealing' from the community is the fastest way to lose the good will<br>
of the people you want on your side...</i><br><br>I agree. There is nobody here trying to steal anything, a thief doesn't ask a house owner's permission before steal it.<br><br><i>Continuing this thread here is fairly worthless.</i><br>
<br>Sorry, I didn't know you were who decide which thread is worthless and which not.<br><br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Rob Smith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kormoc@gmail.com">kormoc@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
2009/4/2 Myth TV <<a href="mailto:mythtvmythtv@gmail.com">mythtvmythtv@gmail.com</a>>:<br>
<div class="im">> Well....it matters if you are planning to develop a commercial STB, and you<br>
> dont't want your competitors to take any advantage from your work or your<br>
> ideas. That's the reason why I start this thread, we want to do things<br>
> right, we know and understand what opensource movement represents and we<br>
> want to respect GPL licenses. But would prefer not to release our changes<br>
> source code because of what I've said before and we were wondering if<br>
> there's any way to achieve it.<br>
<br>
</div>I don't think you do understand the open source movement. You're<br>
asking to take something the community has worked years on for free<br>
and to use it to better your personal goals without contributing back<br>
to the community. That's quite evil imho.<br>
<br>
If you did things right, yes, you would have to open source your<br>
changes, yes your competitors would be able to use them, but you would<br>
also be able to use your competitors, *and* you would be able to<br>
benefit from the community.<br>
<br>
I look at it like this. If you have to close off or horde some code to<br>
make your product special, you really don't have a specail product<br>
anyway. There's a pile of companies out there that are very successful<br>
with their open source projects because they bring something extra<br>
beyond the code, and that's worth the money. It might be hardware<br>
integration, or just customer support/services, etc.<br>
<br>
'Stealing' from the community is the fastest way to lose the good will<br>
of the people you want on your side...<br>
<br>
For specific license questions, you really should contact the FSF<br>
(<a href="mailto:licensing@fsf.org">licensing@fsf.org</a>). They have people who would know how to answer<br>
your specific questions on what you can and can't do legally.<br>
<br>
Continuing this thread here is fairly worthless.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
~Rob<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5">_______________________________________________<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br>