Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 31, 2004 08:33 PM
Sorry, the Linux community is not my community. The Free Software community is, and we believe that selling things is great - but it must be with permission. The kernel that is Linux belongs to my community, not a mythical Linux community that disregards international copyright law.
Please see the following references: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
to get informed about the difference between licensing terms and economic compensation. In short, a copyrighted work means the creator owns it and regulates who can use it and in what way. A license describes how other people may use the copyrighted work.
Now, TO GET a license you either pay or don't pay. You pay for MS Office, but you don't pay for MS Internet Explorer. The licenses does not say anything about what either product costs. The same applies to GNU GPLed software. You pay or you don't pay - this is up to the distributor. Since distributing software has about zero marginal costs, most companies based around free (as in freedom) software charge for services and support. One supplier of Microsoft licenses told me they make about 10% profit from selling licenses. The rest is services and support. The two world are not that different.
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Re:Don't you get it?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 31, 2004 08:33 PMPlease see the following references:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
to get informed about the difference between licensing terms and economic compensation. In short, a copyrighted work means the creator owns it and regulates who can use it and in what way. A license describes how other people may use the copyrighted work.
Now, TO GET a license you either pay or don't pay. You pay for MS Office, but you don't pay for MS Internet Explorer. The licenses does not say anything about what either product costs. The same applies to GNU GPLed software. You pay or you don't pay - this is up to the distributor. Since distributing software has about zero marginal costs, most companies based around free (as in freedom) software charge for services and support. One supplier of Microsoft licenses told me they make about 10% profit from selling licenses. The rest is services and support. The two world are not that different.
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