Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 16:46:53 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson <csfbsd@raggedclown.net> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: First test of GPL in court Message-ID: <20020228154653.GA2699@raggedclown.net> In-Reply-To: <20020228151635.A74693@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> References: <20020227122820.A64839@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20020227142005.A16555@energyhq.homeip.net> <20020227132417.B64839@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20020227052928.L12253@rain.macguire.net> <20020227133748.C64839@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20020227054428.M12253@rain.macguire.net> <20020227150039.B16555@energyhq.homeip.net> <20020228151635.A74693@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 03:16:35PM +0000, j mckitrick wrote: > | FWIW he has never said you can't make profit selling GPL'ed software, > | you can charge as much as you want for it, but I've never seen any > | company making money on that, except a few Linux distribution vendors, > | which anyway use code created by other people, so that doesn't really > | count. > > I've been racking my brain for an example of something that technically > *could* be done but for practical reasons *isn't* done in business. I > can't think of any, but if I do, I'll post it. Maybe politics would be > better, like in totalitarian countries where they say 'Of course any > other party is free to run for office' but no one does, or has any > chance of winning. > > RMS doesn't have to say you can't sell software, but he's essentially > made it all but impossible from a business point of view. > Mmm. I believe "Smoothwall" have solved this conundrum, I am not exactly sure how they have done it, but they release a "GPL" version of their firewall for free, but also have home and commercial versions (which I gather they make quite a good living out of). I believe the guy who runs it is or has been in long discussions with FSF about this and seems to have resolved any issues. The firewall is based on a very stripped version of Redhat using ipchains, squid etc...plus a web management interface. There used to be (maybe still is) a link from GNU to some outfit trying to start a commercial company based on GPL software. I joined the list for a while, just as a lurker. I would say 90% of the mail I read concerned discussions about how much everyone should get paid, whether the programmers should get paid the same as the salesmen, that kind of thing. I didn't see anything about *what* they would sell. It apparently had the FSF's blessing though. -- Regards Cliff Sarginson -- <csfbsd@raggedclown.net> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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