Re: [LUG] Open source, GNU.

[Alex Charrett <chas at termisoc.org>]

On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Peter Hatton wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Peter Hatton wrote:
> New sources Betty? Ok Ok, yeah, I am planning to release my calendar code
> under some Open Source, GNU, whatever license, however 

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
Is a good place to start.  Remember though, this page was written by RMS
himself and thus many not be completely unbiased towards the GNU Licences.

The cost\sale\money issue:

	From the GPL Preamble:

	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. 


	However, from deep in the GPL (a tad abbrevaited):

	You may copy and distribute the Program, to give any third party,
	for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing
	source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
	corresponding source code.


The real sticking point IMHO with selling GPL'd software is selling other
peoples contributions and them making no gains from it.  To be honest, if
you want to sell it, dont GPL it.

If you want to do something like that try the MPL (Mozilla Public
Licence), but I think the parts where Netscape retained all rights to
everything were dropped because of general outcry.

As long as you intend it to remain totally free (source, cost, liberty
etc.) I see no reason to not GPL it.

-=-=-Alex Charrett-=-=-
		SMS: chas at termisoc.org subject:SMS
Mail:   chas at termisoc.org		Web: http://www.termisoc.org/~chas/

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