On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 17:05 +0100, Marek wrote:
> "You may charge for physical act of transferring a copy":
Your interpretation of this clause is at odds with the FSF's, and indeed
GPLv3 has been reworded to clarify that the GPLv2 phrasing did not mean
"You may ONLY charge for the physical act of transferring a copy". GPLv3
now makes it clear(er) that distribution simply by making the source
code available on the net will satisfy both the GPL's requirement that
distribution of the program be accompanied by the availability of source
code *AND* the meaning of "distribution" itself. The FSF also makes it
abundantly clear on their web site that you may charge any amount
whatsoever for whatever you want.
Specifically, on the same page that equates "selling software"
explicitly with "distributing software" (with no room for ambiguity at
all, the FSF says "Actually we encourage people who redistribute free
software to charge as much as they wish or can."
> So let's rephrase the statement:
> Activities other than copying, distribution and modification ...
> whether or not a third party is charging for such copying,
> distribution, or modification in order to make profit or cover the
> costs for doing so.
No, lets not rephrase because there is no need. The GPL already makes it
perfectly clear. The fact that you want to explicitly make it even
clearer doesn't change that. You also missed the most important part:
"are not covered by this license".
> Paul, this is the General Public License, not General Public Labour.
> And in fact, you' might be the one working your as* off in order to
> fuel profit of others. And they might not give back.
> If someone rips of parts of ardour in order to build a 24 track hw
> recording machine (for example)
> he won't even bother to release the parts.
> What will you do?
> Sue him? Time and money consuming, what do you get as a poor
> opensource developer?
This is the potential risk of using the GPL. A 3rd party redistributes
GPL'ed software, refuses to release their source, as required by the
GPL. They are in violation of at least one law in most jurisdictions. Do
you (or I) as a developer, want to risk having to prosecute this kind of
situation? If the answer is "no", then (a) don't use the GPL (b) don't
write useful software. (b) matters because the evidence so far suggests
that the use of the GPL doesn't significantly alter the likelihood that
useful source code will be pirated.
But this has *always* been the case. The FSF understands this, I
understand this, almost everyone who releases software under the GPL
understands this. The LS guys may or may not have fully thought through
the implications of producing very useful and potentially lucrative
software under the GPL, but the implication was *always* there that this
could happen.
> Seriously though, give me at least 10 links.
You have been given links to the FSF website which make their position
very, very clear. I think you just don't basically believe that any sane
person would use a license that could potentially allow a law-evading
3rd party to profit from their work. You're wrong. Unless I'm insane and
so too are all the other people who have chosen to use the GPL knowing
clearly that this is a risk (albeit with any open source and even some
closed source projects, GPL or not)
> If people interpreting the GPL in the woodstock sense of way, will
> eventually stop doing it, and start looking for solutions in order to
> squeeze some revenue out of their open source work,
> they will eventually start seeking for a different license.
They might, yes. It wouldn't be a bad idea in some cases. Ghostscript
did this years ago with the Aladdin Public License, which was basically
GPL-with-no-commercial-resale.
The point is, there is no evidence so far that use of the GPL has
impeded revenue-generation to a sufficient extent that most existing
license users want to stop using it. Many projects (eg. mySQL) that have
the potential for large scale revenue generation simply use a second
license when making arrangements with companies that do not wish to deal
with the GPL - does this constitute switching away from the GPL, or a
more creative approach? Projects like Asterix are doing quite with
revenue generation in spite of or because of their GPL'ed status.
> And that
> might have deep consequences. Every single developer can choose
> another license, seek legal advice in order to do so, or in order to
> write a new one, etc. With the GPL, you don't have to deal with such
> things, since it's a defacto standard. Meaning the number of licenses
> for which you need a legal intepretation is equal to 1,
Right, so it would be good if people didn't make a switch. But there are
very good reasons to do so in some cases.
> If a company makes profit with opensource software as a *third party*,
> and is required to invest part of its profit into development of the
> opensource product, either by paying or by coding, how much does such
> fact make the software less free?
Nothing in the GPL nor any other "open source" or "free software"
license can require this.
> You're talking about distribution, under the terms of GPL.
> You can charge for distribution of software licensed under the terms
> of GPL, not *for software* licensed under the terms of GPL.
There is no clause in the GPL that says this. You take a limiting view
of the clause that begins "You may charge a fee for ..." ; most others
taken an demonstrative view of it.
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Received on Wed Jan 30 20:15:30 2008
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