[linux-audio-user] Announcing Gnomoradio

Rob lau at kudla.org
Fri Oct 31 18:08:10 EST 2003


On Friday 31 October 2003 17:12, iriXx wrote:
> >The distribution must be allowed without any
> > charges, as soon as I have the good. That's a central point
> > in all libre software.
>> have you READ the GPL???? it specifically says that you may
> charge for distribution.

OK, so Frank says distribution must be allowed without any 
charges, and you say that you may charge for distribution.

You're actually both right.  You can charge for distribution, but 
you can't forbid the people to which you distribute from either 
giving it away or charging if they choose to distribute it 
further, so long as they follow the terms of the license.  So 
you can charge 5 grand for your GPL'ed code, but your client is 
then free to give it to all his competitors.

What makes the GPL useful for those of us writing commercial 
software in certain vertical markets is that our clients don't 
tend to want to share with their competitors.  But it pretty 
much eliminates the "you must pay me 5 grand for each and every 
machine you install it on" model favored by most proprietary 
software vendors.  It's pretty much "site license or nothing", 
which customers tend to like better anyway as long as it's not 
cost prohibitive.

I really don't know how to apply the GPL literally to music, or 
if it's even desirable to do so.  I think that's why we have so 
many competing free music licenses out there already.

Rob




More information about the Linux-audio-user mailing list