Re: [debian-knoppix] SCO investing in Troll Tech ???
On September 2, 2003 01:47 am, Klaus Knopper wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 08:24:42PM -0400, Gilles Pelletier wrote:
> > On September 1, 2003 05:07 pm, Chad Page wrote:
> > > That and for our purposes (X11/KDE) Qt is under the GPL.
> >
> > Not exactly, as far as I remember. The GPL allows anybody to sell their
> > product at any price they wish inasmuch as the code remains available for
> > anyone to modify and share. Thus Mandrake can sell it's clustering
> > version for 2320 USD.
> >
> > Neither Mandrake, SuSE or Bed Rat are making much profits at the present
> > time.
>
> Neither do proprietary vendors.
Save for Microsoft, at least. And there are still quite a few proprietary
vendors that make money.
> Just selling software packages (or
> useage licenses) just does not seem to be very profitable anymore.
> What's your point?
>
> > Whenever they do, mainly if GNOME was to diasppear someday, couldn't some
> > small investors ask that Troll Tech get the money they're entitled to?
> > Would the employees protest against such a move?
> >
> > I read this licence ffast about 2 years ago and I'm not presently in much
> > of a state to study it. Maybe somebody can provide better information
> > with references?
>
> If you are not sure about what's in the license you read 2 years ago, you
> should read it again. What's your point?
My point is about something like this, though it is not part of the license
itself:
"The Free Edition licenses do not allow the development or distribution of
commercial software."
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/freelicense.html
Is this exactly the same as saying that "The Free Edition licenses allows the
development or distribution of any GPLed Software" ?
Mandrake's
CORPORATE SERVER 2.1 sells for $1,499 USD
MULTI-NETWORK FIREWAL for $1,990 USD
MandrakeClustering (1-8 processeors) for $2,320 USD
MandrakeClustering (8-16 processeors) for $4,176 USD
http://www.mandrakestore.com/mdkinc/index.php?MDK_STORE_REFERER=&LANG=en_US&UID=&CUSTID=&origin_=
Is this commercial software? If, for every corporate server, they sell 100
power packs at 79$, is it commercial software?
http://www.mandrakestore.com/mdkinc/index.php?MDK_STORE_REFERER=&LANG=en_US&UID=&CUSTID=&origin_=
Can you buy MandrakeClustering 16p and resell it at half the price to a
hundred customers, as the GPL would allow? Mandrake is remarkably silent
alout the license, which is certainly Mandrake's problem, not QT's. But I
can't help being worried by businesses' legalese when they're involved in the
Linux world.
Bed Rat's and SuSE's pricing scheme are probably equivalent. Now we discover
that Canopy and SCO have shares in TrollTech. Wasn't the GPL clear before SCO
decided to sue IBM for using Unix code? I believe it was and that SCO doesn't
have much of a case.
But is the Q license so clear, is TT enforcing it today as it will do tomorrow
or is it just waiting for the fish to swallow the bait? Are we not heading
towards a clash? I hope not but... it certainly would be time for TT... and
maybe everybody to take position about "free" Linux servers selling for over
$2,000 .
The whole TT Q license:
http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl.html
More on Mandrake's support:
"Please contact MandrakeSoft (clustersales@mandrakesoft.com) for detailed
pricing. "
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/clustering
GP
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