Forwarding my bigger mail after ruthlessly trimming it
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Aseem Rane Date: Jan 14, 2007 4:34 AM
i am basically building upon the millions(possibly) spent by the creator in
developing, market research for usability and marketing.
In FOSS world you need not spend millions developing a software. The community participation builds on the software.
Even when companies like Trolltech or MySQL started out as non-free software, down the line they decided to release it as GPL under dual licensing. They might have spent millions on the development but still releasing their software under GPL made perfect sense to them. Probably you can use these examples as case studies.
But saying that he should release as distributable is infringing upon his
moral right!(this is indirectly implied when you dub his software as not free (as in freedom))
FSF people believes in a certain philosophy and they preach it. If you are not convinced they do not adopt any illegal or immoral ways to make you go their way. If you are not convinced they will repeatedly try to convince you. In my opinion there is no "infringing upon his moral right!" here. whether to release your software under GPL solely depends on you. If you do not agree with FSF find a license suitable for your requirements or roll on your own.
but just because FOSS philosophy says
that freedom software should be distributable free of charge does not mean
that it's right.
The FOSS philosophy DOES NOT say that you should distribute the software free of charge. Remember Free as in Beer Vs Free as in Freedom??