Author: Don Dailey
Date: 19:08:48 11/11/98
Go up one level in this thread
>>IF YOUR PROGRAM IS DERIVED FROM GNU PROGRAMS IT IS COPYLEFT. Section 0.: >>..."The ``Program'', below, refers to any such program or work, and a ``work >>based on the Program'' means either the Program or any derivative work under >>copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, >>either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language." > >If the contention here is that anything created with a gnu compiler or other >tools must be free, I don't think this supports the contention. > >If this were the case, gnu tools would be useless in any context involving >profit of any sort, which would seem to make them useless at work. > >But, back to the compiler. I think that the use of the term "derived" means >"based upon" or "created from", not "created with". I think that the intent is >to keep people from selling the compiler, not from selling anything that is >compiled. > >>YOU CAN'T CHARGE FOR IT: Section 2 "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." See also 3. b & c, and Section 6. > >This is interesting because I thought that it *was* alright to sell a copyleft >product as long as you included source code and told people they could give it >away. > >This sounds like a goofy thing to do, but you can *buy* gnuchess and the like on >disk for a few bucks in off-beat places like music stores sometimes. > >So I wonder what the deal is with this. > >bruce Yep, you are right, you can sell a copyleft product. This is not a goofy thing at all because it actually works! People are willing to pay money for added value if the cost is reasonable. People buy the cdrom because it is a pain to download all the stuff and organize it yourself. RedHat offers customer support too. If you don't buy it from them you probably don't get the customer support. Even though I have lot's of bandwidth I buy Linux distributions for our machines. Although it may be evil, I like supporting this cool concept and think it to be better than paying a premium for jealously guarded proprietary secrets and agreeing to stuff before even opening it up to see what it is. If it's actually better too, it's a no brainer for me. - Don
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