Selling GPL'ed Software (split from: "The current Pandoras price tag")

[Exophase]

That google doesnt refuse and instead willfully gives US agencies cart blanche while officially playing the restricting game on law officers in the same country makes it a fair point to make.

They don't have to give US agencies unmitigated access to their data, the NSA can and does just snoop the data lines coming from their data centers.

 

[hedwards]

FSF makes taking money for software more a "distribution fee" thing than actually paying for the right to use it. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

That's probably one of the easiest analogies to make. The GPL guarantees you the right to access the source and in general to use the source as you see fit. The main restrictions on the code don't come into play unless you modify them for external use.

Describing it as a distribution fee or possibly for support are probably the closest analogies that people are likely familiar with, other than a straight up donation.

I always thought you had to make a substantial contribution to a project to redistribute it for money. Anything that would warrant a fork basically.

What the FSF says about free software on the pages does not translate to GPL only, nor does it have any bearing on whats actually in the GPL license, which is a legal matter.

The issue relating to tracking on google play seems to me that you cant opt out of the package survey, nor are you told in any meaningful manner that you opt in by default.

I don't believe that's the case. What part of the GPL provides that protection?

AFAIK, you're free to sell the binaries, you're not free to claim you wrote it if you didn't or change the license and you're required to provide the code under the terms the GPL provides.

It's just typically foolish to pay for GPL code in most cases. The only reasons I can see for doing that is if you want to support the project, need support or aren't able to compile it yourself for some reasons. But, most programs that are intended for non-technical users will be compiled for major supported platforms.

 

[hedwards]

Forgot this forum doesn't merge posts.

 

[WizardStan]

But, most programs that are intended for non-technical users will be compiled for major supported platforms.

Sometimes with a fee attached, as is the case with Wesnoth on Android from which this whole argument spawned.

 

[Exophase]

That's probably one of the easiest analogies to make. The GPL guarantees you the right to access the source and in general to use the source as you see fit. The main restrictions on the code don't come into play unless you modify them for external use.

Let's be really clear here: the GPL guarantees you the right to access source code if you've been provided a binary. The GPL doesn't have a problem with me only sending my software to my friends or people I otherwise approve of, and they're free to keep it to themselves. The GPL grants the right to distribute software but not the requirement.

That also means that if I sell software I don't have to give you source code unless you buy it. And note that if you're charging a lot of money, like $10k for some enterprise software packages sold to companies, there's a good chance that your buyers will on average not feel that comfortable passing it along for free.

FSF has no problem with companies developing their own private software for internal use and doesn't see a conflict with that being "Free" either, although I have to imagine in that case they'd support an employee taking the code and giving it to whoever he wants. Not sure what their stance would be on this employee then getting fired. I still find it kind of funny that private code that a group of people use indirectly to give them some kind of corporate advantage is not considered proprietary by FSF, that screams proprietary to me.

Describing it as a distribution fee or possibly for support are probably the closest analogies that people are likely familiar with, other than a straight up donation.

I don't think that's a good analogy. Distribution fee very clearly implies to me that you're paying a necessary contribution towards distribution, like a shipping and handling cost. GPL allows and FSF condones charging whatever you want. They consider it participation in the free market and outright say you should charge whatever people are willing to pay for your software.

I don't believe that's the case. What part of the GPL provides that protection?

AFAIK, you're free to sell the binaries, you're not free to claim you wrote it if you didn't or change the license and you're required to provide the code under the terms the GPL provides.

I don't know what comradekingu is talking about either, GPL doesn't set a limit on how what entitles you to charge for software. Maybe he's thinking of the stipulation where you really can't charge more than a fair distribution fee to send source code to people whom are entitled access to it by the license.

I'm not actually sure what the GPL's requirements are regarding credits. I know you can change the name of the project completely. Somehow I think going through the source code and removing the copyrights of previous authors would not be legal but I'm not sure if the GPL itself is really protecting that...

It's just typically foolish to pay for GPL code in most cases. The only reasons I can see for doing that is if you want to support the project, need support or aren't able to compile it yourself for some reasons. But, most programs that are intended for non-technical users will be compiled for major supported platforms.

This again? So if someone searches for something on iOS or Google Play and finds a highly rated app for $1, they're foolish because they didn't take the time to find out if it's GPLed and if someone uploaded it for free? And when they find a free version isn't on the same store they should go googling for it so they can sideload it (assuming their iOS device is Jailbroken)?

Honestly, I do think Google could do a lot to help this (as could Apple. But they won't. Apple doesn't even like GPLed stuff on their store, period). If they had a clearly visible license field including "touch to find out what this means" that'd raise awareness. And apps should of course be accountable for reporting the correct license. Probably a lot of GPLed stuff on Google Play is in violation by not providing the terms of the license (the old COPYING file) with the binary in a way that's clearly visible to the user. That's hard to do without being really intrusive and adding development time. Google should include it as part of an agreement when you purchase it - no one would read it, but it'd be another quick indicator that it's GPL.

Given how much Google benefits from FOSS themselves they could really stand to do at least this much.

 

[comradekingu]

FSF makes taking money for software more a "distribution fee" thing than actually paying for the right to use it. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

That's probably one of the easiest analogies to make. The GPL guarantees you the right to access the source and in general to use the source as you see fit. The main restrictions on the code don't come into play unless you modify them for external use.


Describing it as a distribution fee or possibly for support are probably the closest analogies that people are likely familiar with, other than a straight up donation.

I always thought you had to make a substantial contribution to a project to redistribute it for money. Anything that would warrant a fork basically.


What the FSF says about free software on the pages does not translate to GPL only, nor does it have any bearing on whats actually in the GPL license, which is a legal matter.


The issue relating to tracking on google play seems to me that you cant opt out of the package survey, nor are you told in any meaningful manner that you opt in by default.

I don't believe that's the case. What part of the GPL provides that protection?


AFAIK, you're free to sell the binaries, you're not free to claim you wrote it if you didn't or change the license and you're required to provide the code under the terms the GPL provides.


It's just typically foolish to pay for GPL code in most cases. The only reasons I can see for doing that is if you want to support the project, need support or aren't able to compile it yourself for some reasons. But, most programs that are intended for non-technical users will be compiled for major supported platforms.

I would assume the copyright part. Could be wrong though. I pay for software all the time, mesa development was the latest. Use some empathy, there are other views out there. Curiously you can sell mesa, as is stated in a separate part from distribution.

I dont know about the GPL, but it certainly is very frowned upon to reap the rewards for other peoples labour.

 

[_wb_]

That google doesnt refuse and instead willfully gives US agencies cart blanche while officially playing the restricting game on law officers in the same country makes it a fair point to make.

They don't have to give US agencies unmitigated access to their data, the NSA can and does just snoop the data lines coming from their data centers.

If they wouldn't collect and store the data in the first place, then there would be nothing to snoop (legally or otherwise) or to get court orders for - or at least they wouldn't get the convenience of having Google's vast infrastructure doing all the hard spying work for them.

Even if the laws get changed in some country to make it obligatory to collect such data, then they still can't force organizations to collect the data retro-actively.

 

[Exophase]

If they wouldn't collect and store the data in the first place, then there would be nothing to snoop (legally or otherwise) or to get court orders for - or at least they wouldn't get the convenience of having Google's vast infrastructure doing all the hard spying work for them.

Even if the laws get changed in some country to make it obligatory to collect such data, then they still can't force organizations to collect the data retro-actively.

I wasn't talking about snooping to retrieve Google's internally mined statistics/analysis - which probably doesn't spend a lot of time leaving Google (if any), I'm talking about them filtering raw data by putting boxes in data centers. Which is something they're currently doing. Meaning that whatever Google has given them directly is insufficient (and I don't think we really know exactly what Google has provided, AFAIK Google wants permission to describe this more). This is not data Google is collecting, this is the data that you send to Google.

Governments probably won't have much success in forcing a company to start storing more data on its users, but they could install a direct tap on them.

I guess people should also stop keeping any kind of history on your computer too because the government can take your computer then use it to incriminate against other people somehow (even if no one's talking about anything illegal). Maybe that's what you do, personally I don't like deleting all my logs and stuff since they're useful for me to have.

 

[hedwards]

That's probably one of the easiest analogies to make. The GPL guarantees you the right to access the source and in general to use the source as you see fit. The main restrictions on the code don't come into play unless you modify them for external use.

Let's be really clear here: the GPL guarantees you the right to access source code if you've been provided a binary. The GPL doesn't have a problem with me only sending my software to my friends or people I otherwise approve of, and they're free to keep it to themselves. The GPL grants the right to distribute software but not the requirement.

That also means that if I sell software I don't have to give you source code unless you buy it. And note that if you're charging a lot of money, like $10k for some enterprise software packages sold to companies, there's a good chance that your buyers will on average not feel that comfortable passing it along for free.

FSF has no problem with companies developing their own private software for internal use and doesn't see a conflict with that being "Free" either, although I have to imagine in that case they'd support an employee taking the code and giving it to whoever he wants. Not sure what their stance would be on this employee then getting fired. I still find it kind of funny that private code that a group of people use indirectly to give them some kind of corporate advantage is not considered proprietary by FSF, that screams proprietary to me.

 
It only takes one person redistributing the code for it to be available for free to anybody that wants to use it. It's just plain silly to charge for GPL code and then count on it not being pirated as you've almost completely lost any enforcement rights over redistribution by using GPL licensed code. As long as they keep with the terms of the license then you can't do anything about it. What's more, even if they do violate the license in some way, that doesn't apply to anybody who received the code from them anyways as the right to distribute is what's rescinded, not the right to use it.

Describing it as a distribution fee or possibly for support are probably the closest analogies that people are likely familiar with, other than a straight up donation.

I don't think that's a good analogy. Distribution fee very clearly implies to me that you're paying a necessary contribution towards distribution, like a shipping and handling cost. GPL allows and FSF condones charging whatever you want. They consider it participation in the free market and outright say you should charge whatever people are willing to pay for your software.

Here's a hint, the cost of servers isn't free.

It's just typically foolish to pay for GPL code in most cases. The only reasons I can see for doing that is if you want to support the project, need support or aren't able to compile it yourself for some reasons. But, most programs that are intended for non-technical users will be compiled for major supported platforms.

This again? So if someone searches for something on iOS or Google Play and finds a highly rated app for $1, they're foolish because they didn't take the time to find out if it's GPLed and if someone uploaded it for free? And when they find a free version isn't on the same store they should go googling for it so they can sideload it (assuming their iOS device is Jailbroken)?

Honestly, I do think Google could do a lot to help this (as could Apple. But they won't. Apple doesn't even like GPLed stuff on their store, period). If they had a clearly visible license field including "touch to find out what this means" that'd raise awareness. And apps should of course be accountable for reporting the correct license. Probably a lot of GPLed stuff on Google Play is in violation by not providing the terms of the license (the old COPYING file) with the binary in a way that's clearly visible to the user. That's hard to do without being really intrusive and adding development time. Google should include it as part of an agreement when you purchase it - no one would read it, but it'd be another quick indicator that it's GPL.

Given how much Google benefits from FOSS themselves they could really stand to do at least this much.

That's not what I said and you ought to know that.

As far as Apple goes, they don't let GPL things into their walled garden because it's not possible for them to do so without violating the GPL or opening up their system as they'd have to provide access to the code as well as the ability to run it on the device with modifications.