[thelist] Legal question, GNU/PGL related

[Garrett Coakley]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 17:02:26 -0700
"Kevin D. White" <nonzero at well.com> wrote:

> The client is paying for your services not the software so this really
> is not a software license issue.  You may not charge for software
> covered under the GPL, otherwise it wouldn't be "free software."  

Dunno a polite way of putting this, so, ummm.... 

*bzzt*

...wrong. *;)

Otherwise the 70UKP I shelled out last year on this copy of Redhat Linux
7.2 was sent to a CIA slush fund/Conservative Party HQ/Illumanati.

'Free' refers to the rights (not the price) that you have in
regard to software. The fundemental right of the GPL is this: you can do
what ever the hell you want, and charge what you want, but if you make
any changes to the software then you have to release those changes back
to the community.

I could go into a long rambling dissertation on the GPL and what it
actually means for us developers, but much better to give you some
links. Especially since I've had a little too much Guinness to start
structuring senten...santan....sentens..... long lists of words.

Anyway...


http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you
should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you
should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.

Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as
much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read
on."


http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
"Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU GPL"


http://www.opensource.org/
"The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can
read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software,
the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix
bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow
pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing."


Any more questions, just holler.

G.


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