Kent Starr wrote:

# While I agree in principle re least restrictive licnesing, I still
# question the automatic assumptiom that GPL is counter-commercial, Is
# code obfuscation/proprietization really necessary to commercial
# succes? 

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes it might not be necessary, but it 
still might be a big help.

# Or is that a short-sited, easy out for producers of intrinsically
# inferior product?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Various licences will tend to favor some types, ways, or styles of
commercialization over others. Some favor status quo businesses,
others favor less mainstream forms of business, and so on. GPL-GNU +
Linux has certainly catalyzed some worthwhile commercial developments,
so it is certainly counter-factual to argue that GPL is
counter-commercial. (This is a particularly strange and ironic charge,
considering that most commercial software copyrights are not even
remotely open-source in any sense. Yet most people don't call them
counter-commercial.)

In any case, I still favor using a well-known and widely-used but
less-restrictive license for what might be regarded as the means of in
effect very loosely institutionalizing the otherwise informal
world-wide Ruby development consortium.

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)