Free?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Brad Anderson" <eco at gnuk.net> wrote in message 
news:mailman.475.1319604042.24802.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 10:22 PM, Kagamin <spam at here.lot> wrote:
>
>> Chante Wrote:
>>
>> > > there's no mercantile reason to restrict use of a patented technology
>> > > in a GPL3 software.
>> >
>> > Explain that statement please. Do you wish to retract it?
>>
>> GPL software cannot be sold for profit, so even if the author would be
>> charged a fee 1% per sold copy the patent holder will get 0 anyway.
>>

Non-GPL free software can't realisticlly be sold at a profit either. Yea, 
it's *technically* allowed, but all you have to do is say "Hey all! No-cost 
version of the same damn thing over here...!!!" Hell, you can even position 
your no-cost version as pirated, except no one can stop you because it's 
totally legal. Seriously, anyone who *tried* to sell zlib/MIT/etc software 
would essentially be getting into the business of selling "guaranteed 
pre-pirated" products, and we all know how much companies like getting 
pirated. And even if they did do it and make money, well, you were already 
just giving it away, so you wouldn't have been getting any of that money in 
the first place. And if *that* happened, you can just change your mind and 
start selling it yourself, even close up the newer versions, etc...

Yea, you can come up with a bunch of contrived "got ripped-off" scenarios, 
but ultimately the risk is very, very low, and there's many avenues of 
recourse that don't involve the courts (which most open-source authors would 
never be able to aggressively pursue anyway). There's already lots of 
zlib/MIT/etc software authors out there, how many of them have gotten ripped 
off from money that would have otherwise ended up in their pocket? Worrying 
about it is akin to picking up "getting mobbed as a result of winning the 
lottery" insurance.

>
> Where'd you get that silly notion?  It's libre, not gratis.
>
> [1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
>

FSF keeps banging that drum, but it's only true in theory. Realistically, 
libre tends to force gratis unless there's some significant non-libre 
component that's required, such as game assets.

What you *can* do with GPL is dual-license with a paid commercial 
alternative. But then it's *not* the GPL version that's being sold, it's the 
non-GPL, non-libre version, *and* the public at large doesn't benefit from 
improvements to it. So even then, you're still not selling GPL software for 
a profit, you're just selling the ability to [in the eyes of those who view 
GPL as more free than zlib/MIT/etc] reduce the user's freedoms.