|
On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, John P. Looney wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 02:16:48PM -0400, Joseph Mack mentioned:
> > There is another point about releasing code, that you can charge
> > for it, but I don't understand this, if the code has to be
> > free as in beer.
This is a really easy point to understand.
1.) You only have to give source to people who you have given binaries to.
2.) You completely control the binaries. You can give them away free or
charge $3,000 for them.
3.) If somebody who has paid for a binary requests source, you must give
it to them, either gratis or for reasonable reproduction costs.
Ergo, source is always "free", but only to certain people, and you control
those people.
Now that isn't to say that one of the people you gave the source to can't
turn around and give it away free. This is what keeps the prices to the
binaries down, mostly.
--
Michael
>
> Indeed. RMS used to charge $300 for tapes of emacs source, to cover
> distribution costs. Of course, you could just have gotten a copy of the
> tape off someone he'd previously given one to...
>
> Don't worry people. We're a company of Linux geeks...we know our way
> around the GPL. And, hopefully as soon as we get a little bigger, we'll be
> able to release more & more stuff we've done back to the community.
>
> John
>
>
--
Michael E. Brown, RHCE, MCSE+I, CNA
Dell Linux Solutions
http://www.dell.com/linux
If each of us have one object, and we exchange them,
then each of us still has one object.
If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them,
then each of us now has two ideas.
|
