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Date:      Wed, 18 Apr 2001 04:16:56 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Trevor Johnson <trevor@jpj.net>
To:        Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Cc:        <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re:  Stallman now claims authorship of Linux
Message-ID:  <20010418032018.S12981-100000@blues.jpj.net>
In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010418003011.045ef3b0@localhost>

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> Stallman's rhetoric is doublespeak. The truth is that he condones
> the selling of plastic disks (a low-profit, low-skill endeavor) but
> not the selling of software. (According to the GPL, GPLed software
> itself may NOT be licensed for money.)

The only parts of the GPL I see that mention money are:

	You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy,
	and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange
	for a fee.

and

	[...]give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of
	physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable
	copy of the corresponding source code [...]

Are you saying that hiring someone to make changes to a GPL'd program
would violate this second provision?

> He approves of the trade in disks
> because (a) it furthers his agenda; (b) it allows the FSF to make a bit
> of cash; and (c) he knows that the "parasites" (his own word) who sell
> disks, such as Red Hat, will not be able to make a living as soon
> as high bandwidth connections to the Net are ubiquitous.

I guess the FSF will have to run off donations when that happens.

> Gates' statement is carefully contrived propaganda that attempts
> to justify the actions of a monopolist.

At first it seemed to me that he understood that a monopoly needs a
healthy host to feed off.  On second thought, perhaps he has other ideas.
-- 
Trevor Johnson
http://jpj.net/~trevor/gpgkey.txt



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