🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5NOV199101524978@minnie.me.udel.edu> johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu (Bill Johnston) writes:


>  =======================================================================
>  
>  Q:    When you talk about "free", in the Free Software Foundation,
>        how are you using that word?
>  
>  RMS:  Well, the word "free" has two meanings in English.  One has to
>        do with no price.  The other has to do with freedom.  In the 
>        term "free software", I am talking about freedom, not price.
>        So when a program is free, it means that you the user have the
>        freedom to make copies, the freedom to study it and change it
>        and improve it.  But it doesn't say anything about whether you
>        pay money to get it.  You might get it without paying money, 
>        or you might pay money to get it.  At the Free Software Foundation,
>        we distribute software in two ways.  We put copies on the 
>        computer nets and people can copy that and they don't have to
>        pay anything.  Or they can send us money and we'll mail them
>        tapes.  And that's how we raise most of our money.
>  
>  =========================================================================
>  
>  It is thus possible to REQUEST payment for CopyLefted software,
>  but one cannot REQUIRE payment.  In the business world, very 
>  few are willing to pay for what they can get for free.   In the 
>  "user world", even fewer will pay for things that are free.

Seems to me, having just had a quick re-read of the GPL in the version
(18.57) of emacs I'm reading this in, that this is not correct.  What
RMS said is that HE/FSF doesn't require payment.  Nothing to stop your
friend from requiring payment, if he choses to.  To sell stuff with
the GPL on it, he simply has to include source with what he sells.  Of
course he cannot, in consequence of the GPL, constrain people from
onward distribution to their friends and relatives, or even to rank
strangers.  Unless he wants a brass-bound guarantee of a living from
selling his code, I don't see that that's much of a problem, in
reality.  (Of course, even without the GPL he's got no guarantee of a
living.)  Point is, most people are relatively honest.  Also they know
where their own best interests lie.  If there is a sale price on his
code, most people will pay it.  If he makes it clear that support is
available from him only to people who pay, your putative commercial
user will pay.  Seems to me that's the sensible route for him, if his
alternative is unconstrained no-warranty PD.  As RMS says above, free
means, in this case, unconstrained, not no-cost.

ht

[If there are egregious errors in the above, perhaps that will finally
provoke the Powers That Be to a reply :-)]

--
  Henry Thompson, Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh
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