making money off your GPL-ed code

Bruce Perens bruce at va.debian.org
Thu May 20 06:30:08 UTC 1999


From: Clark Evans <clark.evans at manhattanproject.com>
Clark:
> I feel that if anyone is trying to make money from
> software that is GPL'd, then they obviously do not
> believe in the GPL, thus they really should not be 
> using the GPL.

Clark,

Please, please consider that I have written or collaborated on more GPL-ed
software than most people you know, and the GPL is still my primary license.
I also am the originator of the Open Source Definition, and I deliberately
wrote it to be congruent with the FSF definition of _free_software_.

The reason I say this is to point out that you err in questioning my belief
in the GPL. FYI, while I work actively for free software, I am not convinced
that _all_ software everywhere should be free. But this is a more complex
issue, and not one for this list.

There is an awful lot of dual-licensing with the GPL. The most common examples
would be the LGPL (which includes the GPL by reference) and Perl, but there
are lots of others. I suggest you study their reasons for dual-licensing
further before comdemning them.

	Thanks

	Bruce



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