How does the GPL (GNU General Public License) factor in?
There is a part of open source called GPL that breaks that cycle–that is, it makes it impossible for a commercial company to use any of that work or build on any of that work. So what you saw with TCP/IP or (e-mail technology) Sendmail or the browser could never happen. We believe there should be free software and commercial software; there should be a rich ecosystem that works around that. There are people who believe that commercial software should not exist at all–that there should be no jobs or taxes around commercial software at all. And that’s a small group, but the GPL was created with that goal in mind. And so people should understand the GPL. When people say open source they often mean the GPL. When someone asks a question, “So what about open source?” do they mean open source or do they mean the GPL? We believe in that ecosystem and having the mix of free and commercial software. What’s your position on publishing source code? We have no objection to people publishing sourc
