There’s been a bit of discussion regarding the use of GPL vs. BSD style licenses triggered by Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s Twenty Questions About GPL and Zed Shaw’s Why I GPL. Interesting stuff, even made it to Slashdot. James Bennett has some intelligent things to say about it.

My 2 cents on this, mostly on Zed’s post. The gist of his argument seems to be that he wrote a very popular piece of software, but was denied recognition and financial benefit due to a conspiracy between the triumvirate of VCs, startup founders, and Al Qaeda, all enabled by an over-permissive license.

I absolutely agree with Zed that the choice of license is the author’s alone, and whoever doesn’t like it can take their ball and go home. Ripping on a project because of choice of license is indeed jerkish, although I don’t know if there was any such ripping in this case. Anyway, license choice belongs to the author, agreed.

Zed’s point on VC’s, however, starts to get murky: “I have no reason to give them unrestricted use of my software since they are only interested in turning my software into a hot IPO 2-5 years from now.” That’s … misguided. Infrastructure software has so very little to do with a company reaching IPO – it’s just not very connected. I’m not saying infrastructure software has no value – in fact it’s quite valuable – it’s just not what’s “turned into an IPO.”

Skipping to Zed’s fifth point: “I’ll always be an open source developer, but quite frankly, we’re dying off because the companies who use our software do not give back.” Huh. That’s another one that misses the mark for me. Open source software is more vibrant than ever, and most of the most interesting stuff seems to be coming from startups. Possibly the same ones Zed’s berating for using his software without giving back.

Anyway, open source is definitely not dying off.

So to Zed’s main point, about recognition and financial benefit from open sores software. It’s reasonable to expect to get consulting offers when your software becomes popular. Everybody I know who wrote reasonably popular open source software has gotten plenty of consulting offers. Hell, I even got a fair amount of offers related to my silly tcl-sql interface that had maybe 500 users back in the day.

So why didn’t Zed? He’s clearly a very smart and capable developer, and his software clearly is popular. So what’s the deal?

Well, it might be related to his reputation. Not related to his ability as a developer, not related to his choice of a BSD license.

His blog used to be called “Zed’s So Fucking Awesome”, and he was world renowned for his rants.

When you’re known more for your rants than for your software (perhaps unfairly), it should come as little surprise if you don’t have consulting offers lined up around the block. Rants scare people. “Fucking Awesome” and talk of how you can kick my scrawny ass because of your martial arts training scares people. Don’t get me wrong – it was very entertaining, and I certainly enjoyed reading his blog, but my very next thought was not to go recommend him for a consulting job. Hell, he might kick my ass if I looked at him wrong!

Now everyone seems to agree the Zed is in fact a wonderful human being when you meet him in person, and my email exchanges with him have been nothing short of extraordinary – he’s been ludicrously helpful. I’m saying, he’s probably a great guy to work with.

But that’s not the image he projected.

So, my point, after all these wasted words, is that Zed’s financial prospects are helped far more by his new blog and demeanor than by his choice of license. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be free to say what he wants – I actually really enjoyed his old blog – but I am saying he shouldn’t be surprised if it impacts his financial prospects.