Sent by J. Cox on 29 October 2003 17:05
> Typically, and almost by definition, any open source tools you are
> considering would disallow charging a fee for the product, but do allow
> you to charge a fee for services, such as distribution,
> consulting/customizattion, or the development of add-on modules.
>
That is not quite correct. The GPL in no way affects your ability to
sale, re-sale, profit from, etc a GPL product. What it prevents is the
original copyright to be removed or changed. Free software by definition
is about the sourcecode, and not about the price of the software.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
Is a good reference, and also clearly states what is intended by the
license. Now, what it does do is place the project that forks any GPL
product on the same footing as the original project. If you take a GPL
project, do some modifications, and release the project under a different
name and sale the code, then there is nothing to stop me from buying said
code and re-incorporating it back into the original project.
Hence, there is a constraint, but the constraint is that you need to add
constant value and play by the rules of the original project. Are there
better business models to go after as you suggested? Sure, but to say
that you can not sale GPL source is not the case at all:)
--
J. Cox
http://www.xaraya.com
http://www.wyome.com
--
http://cms-list.org/
please trim your posts.
