[linux-audio-user] License free Linux ??

Daniel James daniel at mondodesigno.com
Fri Dec 5 05:17:30 EST 2003


>   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



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