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[kevkrom]

International Business Machines, who is currently under lawsuit for transferring advanced technology from US proprietary Unix

Tsk, tsk... have we forgotten to use the word "allegedly" where appropriate here? You are stating -- as a fact -- that IBM has improprly transferred proprietary technology from UNIX to Linux. This is not a fact, but merely an unproven allegation made by SCO, which has so-far failed to cite any specific examples of said infringement. SCO's track record to date does not indicate any reasonable liklihood that it will be proved in the future, either.

[kevkrom]

If you want to release your work into "public domain" or other non-GPL license I really don't have a problem with it, because those are not anti-capitalistic licenses

I dare you to point out anything in the GPL license that is "anti-capitalistic". The license basically says that you are free to use the code any way you see fit, but if you distribute a product based on the code, modified or not, you must also provide the source code, with any modifications, to the people receiving the product.

In other words, the author(s) choosing to use this license can prevent someone else from using the author's work in a proprietary product. There are numerous cases of multiply-licensed products that use the same code as GPL'd software, but are licensed to specific individuals/companies under different terms to allow for closed-source use.

Sounds like the free market at work to me.

[Incorrigible]

[Golden Eagle]

I dare you to point out anything in the GPL license that is "anti-capitalistic".

Simple, you can't modify the code for resale without having to give your own work over to your competitors for free. There's zero motivation to invest in that. A few companies are trying but they're just going to be fighting over Linux just like they did Unix, only this time the profits are going to be a hell of a lot lower if they exist at all.

[kevkrom]

Simple, you can't modify the code for resale without having to give your own work over to your competitors for free.

Yeah, well there's an easy solution for that -- don't try to appropriate other people's work for your own purposes without their permission. There are commercial products based off of GPL codebase (e.g., products based on "sendmail"), but in those cases, the distrubutor comes to a separate license agreement with the authors.

I see nothing anti-capitalistic about authors retaining the rights to their own work.