🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2843F55A.21400@ics.uci.edu> jhummel@wave.ics.uci.edu
(Joseph Edward Hummel) writes:

| In article <5350@ztivax.UUCP> sof3@ztivax.UUCP (Walter Meyer) writes:
| >> geissler@D012S050@ap542.uucp (Norbert Geissler):
| >> > the facts:
| >> > I wanted to get a port of GCC from a company which ported it to the
| >> > same type of machine I am using.
| >> > Porting is not trivial, because as far as I know, there are at least
| >> > alignment problems between code generator and machine assembler.
| >> > I got the answer, that I can get this GCC if I pay(!) for the effort they
| >> > had to do the porting.
| 
| I'm a newcomer to GNU, so I'm confused about this last statement.  Can
| someone charge a non-trivial fee for porting GCC?  I thought only fees
| related to copying the software could be charged.
| 
| Can someone clarify?  Thanks.

This seems to be a general confusion.

You can certainly charge people for doing a port of GNUware.  Lots of
people do it.  Cygnus corportation for example charges fees to support
GNU software.  As another example, OSF pays me to support GCC for it's
three reference platforms.  However, the big stumbling block is that
Cygnus or I can't prevent you from giving the software away once
delivered for free.  Nothing says you have to release the software,
just that you can't be prevented from releasing it under terms of the
Gnu Public License.

In terms of economics, the FSF is trying to encorage a shift from sale
of a binary for which you are powerless to modify, to charging for
services rendered (ie, porting, hand-holding, etc.), and then making
the software available once the work has been done.
--
Michael Meissner	email: meissner@osf.org		phone: 617-621-8861
Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02142

You are in a twisty little passage of standards, all conflicting.