🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ueu4gxeaka@ads.com> johnston@ADS.COM (Scott E. Johnston) writes:

   I think I agree that it is desirable for organizations like Cygnus to
   be able to charge for more than distribution costs for ports of GNU
   software, and it is unreasonable to expect someone would port GNU
   software for no charge, but that is not how the license reads.

You misunderstand the Cygnus position, I think.  Cygnus charges for
the service of doing the port (i.e., for their time), not for the copy
of the port you get at the end.  Once you have it, you can give it
away yourself for free, as could Cygnus.  As far as I can tell, this
is exactly how RMS claims commercial software development should be
handled.  Time will tell how well it actually works in a capitalist
marketplace, but the Cygnus folks seem to be off to quite a healthy
start.

Charging for services is, in fact, in the grand GNU tradition.  There
is also nothing that restricts "distribution charges."  The FSF, for
example, has been known to endorse things like $500 CD-ROMs of GNU
source code (which charge obviously far exceeds the cost of the media
and packaging).  I believe the theory is that since it's free, you can
always get it somewhere else--the value is in the particular
distribution method, not the software itself.

I agree that it seems strange, but if you accept RMS's ideas about
economics, the logic does hold up--it's just extremely convoluted
sometimes.
--
Amanda Walker						      amanda@visix.com
Visix Software Inc.					...!uunet!visix!amanda
-- 
"There better be a heaven, because if there isn't, I'm going to raise hell."
		--Regina Tarr