jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) (02/14/91)
In article <2816@cod.NOSC.MIL>, burkley@cod.NOSC.MIL (V. Joe Burkley) writes: |> " I'm sure lots of people will suggest you use the GNU license terms. |> Under this license, the Free Software Foundation allows anyone to use the |> software as one wishes. However, if one intends to distribute the |> software or any new software which depends upon the original package, |> one may not make a profit. In other words, use GNU software and your |> software is free if you want to let anyone else have it. The GNU license |> is getting pretty popular, even with people not associated with the FSF." This is false. FSF doesn't care if you make a profit, and many people are making a profit by distributing or supporting Gnu software (Young Minds will sell you all the FSF software on a CD-ROM and they make a profit on it; Cygnus Support, founded by Michael Tiemann, author of g++, makes money by supporting Gnu and other freely redistributable software). The important phrase is "freely redistributable" -- you cannot prevent anyone from freely redistributing FSF or FSF-derived software. You may charge for the service of distributing the software, and you can make a profit. "Free" in FSF does not mean "no money". It means "freely redistributable" -- though some opponents of FSF think they abuse the language with their interpretation of what that means, I'm done arguing about it. Followups to gnu.misc.discuss. -- Joe Buck jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck