Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] License free Linux ??
From: Daniel James (daniel_AT_mondodesigno.com)
Date: Fri Dec 05 2003 - 12:17:30 EET
> I'm
> sure that EBay, if notified, will take him off if he's violating
> copyright.
I have been in touch with eBay about this person. eBay has a programme
called Vero - for verified rights owners - which allows the Audacity
team to get copyright infringing items removed from the listings. I
believe there is a copyright infringement here based on GPL
violation, as I don't see the offer of source code anywhere.
This individual may not be selling copies in this particular auction,
but if you check his feedback you'll see he has done thousands of
dollars worth of business, selling various software including
OpenOffice and the Gimp.
What's unethical in this case is:
a) he doesn't tell his customers that Audacity is a free beer and very
small download, typically only a couple of MB for the binary
b) by changing the name he divorces 'his' users from the Audacity
community, which is a pretty good way of hiding source code
availability. Obscuring its origin, he breaks the feedback loop which
allows users to improve free software
I understand that this individual hasn't modified the software at all
- he is just misrepresenting it in order to sell it to people who
don't know about Audacity. It's a very crude way of turning free
software proprietary.
Real community distributors offer a download and CD burning service
for people who don't have broadband but need GBs of software, but if
you can use eBay then you can easily download Audacity. So there's no
moral justification at all for this scam.
Cheers
Daniel
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Fri Dec 05 2003 - 16:07:43 EET