What license to pick...

Dave J Woolley david.woolley at bts.co.uk
Fri Sep 29 12:18:20 UTC 2000


> From:	Lionello Lunesu [SMTP:lionello at mondobizzarro.com]
> 
> Does the GPL allow us (the toolkit creators) to ask a fee for commercial
> use
> of our toolkit?
> 
[DJW:] No.  You can ask a fee for the supply of the 
recorded media and for support, but you cannot
charge for the licence itself.  You can even charge for
the process of creating the binary (although anyone
with the source can create their own binary without paying
you).  You could charge a huge fee, and in some markets that
might work, because the market is small or technically 
unsophisticated.

People like Red Hat are charging you for the media and the 
pressing of the Linux CD image onto that media, packaging,
support and printed documentation++, not for the copy of the 
code and the licence to use it.

I think RH may make documentation available on a GPL type
basis, but I believe one of the FSF's concerns is the number
of free packages that really need commercial documentation
before you can use them.
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