Discussion about the GPL: shovels and holes

I had an IM conversation with a law student friend of mine to help her understand the [GPL](http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) a little better. It focuses mostly on the economics of free / open software and a little on copyright. Well, it actually focuses primarily on shovels. Please pardon the typos and scary structure, I didn’t quite feel like editing :P

(19:56:30) friend: do you think the gpl undermines the
independent commercial software sector bc it effectively makes it
impossible to distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the
product rather than just the cost of distribution?
(19:56:47) me: not at all
(19:56:53) friend: why

Detroit: Cheap Houses

Man, the housing bubble in NorCal is ridiculous. It’s the opposite back in motown; the article title says it all:

[Houses cheaper than cars in Detroit](http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070319/ts_nm/usa_subprime_detroit_dc;_ylt=A)

I actually looked online for a housing auction site, and found that a lot of these houses are in heavily blighted areas such as [48215](http://www.google.com/maps?q=48215&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=42.377457,-82.951326&spn=0.007545,0.021544&t=h&om=1&iwloc=addr).
(Yes, those green and brown spots are empty lots. Yes, this is in an “urban area.” For a quick background on Detroit’s blight issues, read about [elmhurst](http://www.detnews.com/specialreports/2001/elmhurst/) and try and ignore the “racist jews” slant.)