Open source shareware?

[Chris Gehlker]

On 11/8/01 10:08 AM, "phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> AFAICT, this license is OSD-compliant. Obviously this was not the
> intent of the writers of the OSD, which means we need to consider
> amending it.
> 
> The license in question:
> 
>> As long as this permission notice and disclaimer are included, any
>> person obtaining a copy of this software may distribute this
>> software or derivatives.
>> 
>> If you decide to run the software after a 30 day evaluation period,
>> you must pay a fee of $20 to <copyright holder.>

Why would you think that this license is not within the intent of the
writers of the OSD? Just because the author is charging for the binary? This
seems to be the old confusion between free as in speech and free as in beer.
Believe me, if I hire RMS to write some software that's useful to me, he
going to charge me a lot more than $20 for the binary even though he
releases the source under GPL.

If you don't like that license, what about this one:

Copyright <Owner(s)> <date>

License:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for
more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple
Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

Terms of use:
If you decide to run the software after a 30 day evaluation period,
you must pay a fee of $20 to <copyright holder.>

Are you arguing that "is not within the intent of the writers of the OSD"?

Open source software tends to be cheap in monetary terms because anyone can
make trivial changes to the source and market a product that competes with
the original. But that's an effect of the interaction between open software
and the market. It's not an essential part of the definition of "Open
Source"

Just my $20. (That's 20 pesos or about $1.60 US. The price requested by our
hypothetical shareware author)

-- 
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye
level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. -Henry
David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)


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