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Message: <blockquote data-quote="R_kajdi" data-source="post: 2774424" data-attributes="member: 24709">Honestly, does this thing come back to the whole social contract thing? It seems to me a lot of developers are not really aware of what they are doing when they make things OGC or not.    Basically, if you use the OGL, you've taken from the common pot. At the very least, this is the relevent SRD(s), and can also include other OGC out there. This is not free however. While it doesn't cost dollars, it does cost a "tax" in a minimum amount of OGC that you have to have in the product. Basically, to take from the common pot, you have to leave something back there for other people to use. And just like before with the SRD and OGC that you used, you bascially have no control over this stuff. To complain that someone else has decided to take the stuff you put in the community pot and is using it in a way you don't like is very selfish. Basically everything you put into the community pot is a loss to you. You've given it away as the "price" to use what's currently in there. To take and not expect to have to actually put back is violating the social contract that allowed you to take in the first place.     To use an example from another industry, let's look at computer software. The GNU license is in many ways similar to the OGC, though they are not exact congantes. However, the differences in these cases are minimal. The initial Linux implementation is GNU. Think of this as your SRD. If, say, RedHat wants to go out and make a product based on Linux (like they have done in the past) they are free to do so at no dollar cost, but have to realease the code to their program, and have to do so under the same terms as they got their initial code. Sounds fair, right? Okay, now I can turn around, and can give that code away for free. RedHat has exactly zero say in telling me to stop, since they used the same terms to get what they needed to start initially. Am I a bad person, or somehow amoral for doing this? No, this is a common practice in the Open Source software community.     Now, let's go back to our initial argument. Developers are crying foul because while they have taken from the community of ideas, they now want to limit how thier payment gets used, because it may cost them something. This is fundamentally flawed, since effectively the argument is that waht was good for the goose is not good for the gander. You were allowed to use what you got in any way you wanted, and were forced to pay back some stuff to the same community of ideas. Now this payment is actully being paid, and you don't like the price. At this point, it honestly has to be "Too bad". If you didn't like the price that had to be paid, you shouldn't have used the license. To think in any other way is incredibly irresponsible.Raymond K. Crum</blockquote>

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