On Thu, 2005-03-31 at 23:52, sherlock@vsnl.com wrote:
On Friday 01 April 2005 00:48, Rony Bill wrote:
All software (including copies) distributed under the GPL (and several other licences like /QPL/Mozilla/BSD etc afaik) licences are 100% legal and valid. You can use such copies any way you please including charging a zillion dollars for the copy. What you cant do with the gpl is prevent the recepient from
- making copies and distributing the same.
- making changes to the software
Also you have to make avaialble at no additional charge except the cost of media the source code for the software INCLUDING ANY CHANGES OR DERIVATIVES YOU MAKE to such gpld code.
So you can buy a "licenced" version of a "commercial" distro like RH and buy a cd franking plant and frank a zillion copies and sell em. The exception is that
- You will have to remove trade marks like redhat, RH etc. and put
your own Gandhi topee if u please. 2) Remove software having EULAS (eg winmodem, NVIDIA drivers) 3) You cannot copy the manuals which have exclusive (as in you are excluded from coying rights) copyrights.
The term "licence" and "commercial" is a red herring planted by the likes of RH, Trolltech and a few others who would like to confuse you into believing that gpl software not traded for cash is not commercial. Grep the list for eariler posts on this issue. Any GNU/Linux distro or gpl softaware is commercial if it is traded for something of value (including barter of cds).
JT,
While we've discussed this earlier, I'd like your view on the following, from the DansGuardian website:
<snip> For all non-commercial[1] use DansGuardian 2 can be downloaded under the GPL. For all non-commercial use I grant the end-user permission to download DansGuardian 2. Upon your downloading of DansGuardian 2 for non-commercial use I license it under the GPL.
For all commercial[2] use, upon your downloading, DansGuardian 2 is licensed under the GPL, however permission to download DansGuardian from this, or any mirror[3], website is restricted.
The restrictions on the downloading for commercial use are that you may only download it once for free. This will enable you to try out the software before making a decision to purchase a commercial licence to download it. In order to download updates, bug fixes, etc, you must purchase a download licence. </snip>
Based on your interpretation (which I believe to be correct), how does he get away with this? The only thing I can think of is that the changes, bug fixes etc. that he mentions are not GPL'd and will not be posted for free download. Which again is probably not a huge deal even for a non-programmer, since they would generally be rolled into the next release.
Also, if for commercial use DansGuardian gets licenced under the GPL on the first download, I should be able to make and dstribute (sell, give away, whatever) as many copies as I wish. Then where do his stated restrictions on commercial use apply?
So buy one "commercial" copy and copy and sell to hearts content. When you buy support you will get access to a fast server and / or email / phone support so that you can patch and maintain the stuff better. You can then make copies of the patch ad nauseum and offer the same to your clients.
This licence seems funny to me. Is there more to this than is obvious?
Regards,
Krishnan