Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 02:42:02PM -0400, Paula Paul wrote:
> The 'Free' Software Foundation absolutely dictates the business model.
> Anyone can write 'commercial software', as long as you don't restrict or
> charge fees for redistribution.

Oh, come one now - there's nothing in the GPL that disallows you from
charging for your work - they only ensure that such work as you do is
merged back into a publicly available source code base. You can charge
to redistribute any GPLd software you want, as long as you provide the
source. Read the GPL.

 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

 "When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
  price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
  have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
  this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
  if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
  in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

  To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
  anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the
  rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for
  you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it."
 
The point is to keep source available, not to punish authors by forcing
them not to charge for the software.

> Forgive me for being politically incorrect, but the Free Software
> Foundation sounds like Animal Farm in the making (some software is more
> free than others!).

Obviously, you haven't read the GPL.

> Call me a capitalist, but I'd like to remain a professional, paid,
> software developer, and want to retain the choice of licensing my
> work when I want to and however I want to.

You still retain those rights - nobody's saying you don't. But if you
"stand on the shoulders" of other software developers' work, you should
not be able to then incorporate their work into a closed, proprietary
product without making your work available to others as well - just as
they made their work available to you.

Steve

-- 
"Euphoria is not a business strategy" -- Louis Rossetto