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