Re: ELM Copyright
On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, Santiago Vila Doncel wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, Craig Sanders wrote:
>
> > > IMHO, with thats license, `elm' cannot be sold alone.
> >
> > that's not true. you can sell elm on a disk by itself as long as you're
> > prepared to sell a blank disk for the same price.
>
> Maybe, but the *spirit* of the license is that you can not charge for
> *distributing* ELM proper. This is against our DFSG. People should be able
> to make money (not only "cover costs") from *distributing* free software.
I agree with Santiago, free sofware isn't Free if you can't sell it!
>
> To interpret the license by saying that you are just selling a blank disk
> is a sort of cheat, IMHO.
>
Moreover, such an interpretation could be used to force the selling price
of a Debian CD to approach that of a blank, leaving no incentive for their
production.
On the other hand, this is something from non-free that I will have no
problems placing on my Gold CDs. This is because there is other
non-proprietary software on the CD. What I am selling on these CDs is the
Debian packaging of Free Software, and my reputation for producing a
functional CD. I throw in a lot other stuff for free, like those packages
in non-free that have a suitable license for my purposes. I also add a
product called DiD (Drop in Debian) designed to allow custom kernel builds
on a DOS machine.
It should not be considered an insult for a package to reside in non-free.
It's more a matter of identifying certain characteristics of that
software's distribution. This seperation from the main distribution honors
the author's desire for additional control over the software, beyond that
provided by the GPL. Since they still reside on the ftp site, this
means that they can be downloaded by anyone and inspected for their use
and distribution information.
While not an insult, non-free is intended to send a message to the author,
that the license is not adequate for placement in the main distribution.
Now that we have the DFSG, this becomes easier for folks to understand.
(although from the disagreement on this issue, it isn't as clear as it
might be)
Luck,
Dwarf
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