Re: Copying and distributing Debian
On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 10:11:50PM -0400, Phil Beder wrote:
> 2. May I charge a nominal amount ($5 - $10) to cover my costs of time and
> materials for producing the CD ROMs ?
As others said, yes, but the first copy that is bought from you can of
course be further copied without fee if the buyer wishes to do so.
In fact, this has happened before. The census bureau in the US offered a
street map of the US, but IIRC you could only buy (order for money) a copy.
However, as the data was produced by the US government, it was in the public
domain. So Bruce Perens bought a copy and put it online :) Since then,
the census bureau has put their copy online as well.
> 3. Someone raise the point that recently, users of "open source"/"Free
> Software" have the reputation of being software pirates, and that this sort
> of open exchange at public meetings might look bad or be counter productive
> to the goals of the FSF, the GNU project, or the GPL. Could you give your
> opinion on this
This is not true. We don't think it is unethical to redistribute our software
for free. However, we accept donations, and several other projects do as
well, like the FSF and the FSFe. So, you can support us in two ways: You
can copy and redistribute the software as widely as possible, and you can
give us money, too :)
Please also pass the information from this thread on to other people at such
meetings. You might give a short talk about the subject, or have a
discussion round. More information about free software is available at
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU http://www.gnu.org marcus@gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/
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