Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2001 21:28:32 -0700 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Jeff Lasman <jblists@nobaloney.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: GPL nonsense: time to stop Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20011228211759.01d29460@localhost> In-Reply-To: <3C2D25D3.7D3B8E94@nobaloney.net> References: <b2itb2y1nh.tb2@localhost.localdomain> <4.3.2.7.2.20011220065451.02653af0@localhost>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
At 07:09 PM 12/28/2001, Jeff Lasman wrote: >Brett Glass wrote: > >> Try "commercial." GPLed software cannot be commercial, because it >> cannot be the object of commerce. Yes, you can sell a disc with >> the software ON it for money, but you cannot license the software >> ITSELF for money. > >I'm sorry to answer this so late; I was offline for about a week and >then had to catch up on "real" work <wry grin>. > >I'm not sure I agree with you, Brett, and I'd like you to explain or to >point me in the right direction; it appears to me that you can >distribute GPL software any way you want, including commercially, as >long as you also make the source code available at no charge. Am I >missing something? Yep. Read the GPL. It says: >b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole >or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to >be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms >of this License. Again, you can charge for making someone a copy (though in this age of cheap CD-Rs and increasingly available high bandwidth connections it is less and less likely that people will be willing to pay you anything significant for doing that). But you cannot license the software ITSELF for money. That's a key goal of the GPL, as expressed in Stallman's "GNU Manifesto:" programmers are prohibited from creating or owning intellectual capital and thus are reduced to the status of poorly paid wage slaves. (This is the revenge Stallman sought to wreak on the "evil" programmers who ruined his life by departing the MIT AI Lab to start companies.... See Steven Levy's book "Hackers" for a full account.) >The reason for my curiosity is Red Hat's pricing plan for some of their >new products, in the thousands-of-dollars range. I'm wondering if these >disks can be copied and sold by others as so much other Red Hat output >has. I believe that some of Red Hat's software is commercial, whereas copies of other products that are GPLed are sold in a bundle with support. The company's business model isn't working, though. While it has turned a small profit during a few quarters of its existence, over its lifetime it has lost astronomical amounts of investors' money. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4.3.2.7.2.20011228211759.01d29460>