GNU GPL can't force payment?

[Henrik Ingo]

I'm referring to GPLv2 below, things should be identical in GPLv3 but
in different paragraphs.

(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html)

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Lior W. <opensource.*.nwo at neverbox.com> wrote:
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html states authors can charge
> whatever they want, but only for binaries. What they don't say is what's
> the limit for source codes. Does the license dictate the source code be
> given for free or can it have a cost just as long as it's "reasonable"?

You can of course also distribute the software as source code and
charge any amount you want for that. This is in §1.

But otoh, if you primarily distribute binaries, then your customers
have the right to also receive source code when purchasing binaries.
If you don't provide the source together with the binaries, you have
committed in §3b to provide the source to those who ask, and can
charge at most the shipping cost. The actual price of the
binaries+source was already paid when distributing the binary.

In other words, you cannot withold the source code by pricing it at a
gazillion dollars.


On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Lior W. <opensource.*.nwo at neverbox.com> wrote:
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html states a user can avoid buying a
> GNU GPL program by copying the program from a friend who has a copy. Does
> it mean any download site out there (e.g. CNET) can offer for free every
> commercial GNU GPL software in the world?

Yes. This is the whole point of GPL.

> Speaking of which, are there any known commercial GNU GPL softwares?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux comes to minds...

Assuming I understand what you are really asking here: RHEL contains
GPL software and also other open source software. Even so, as a
product it is not available for free, it can only be downloaded from
their customer portal, which you get access to once you've become a
paying customer.

Even so, thanks to RHEL being 100% open source (GPL and other
licenses), there is a clone of RHEL available under the brand "CentOS"
which is identical to RHEL (like your CNET example above). Some users
like to use CentOS for free, some like to buy the original RHEL
product.

Personally, I have also sold GPL software to customers. In our case we
took a GPL product known as WengoPhone (a VoIP software) and modified
it and branded it for a Finnish telecom operator, who paid us for it.
Since it contained their branding and hooks to their VoIP service, the
issue of them copying the software to other telecom operators was
uninteresting. So we later sold the same package again elsewhere. And
btw, also the original WengoPhone we used was itself a commercial
endeavour.

In summary: There's lots of "commercial" GPL software out there, in
various forms.

henrik
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