On Thu, Jan 14, 1999 at 08:51:18PM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> You are correct. It doesn't say "you can", and under the draft it says
> that the permissions must be granted explicitly. Since the Artistic
> License merely gives the community the responsibility to uphold the fees
> charged on software under the license, it doesn't say "yes, you can
> charge a fee" and therefore wouldn't be DFSG free.
In particular, it only says you can charge a fee for the distribution,
not for the product. So you can't sell, say, gcc for $20 and gnat [0]
for $50, just because gnat's an *Ada* compiler and therefore so much
cooler. You have to justify your costs in terms of what it costs you to
actually distribute it, and whatever else might be on the CD.
The DFSG says the following:
The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from
selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate
software distribution containing programs from several different
sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such
sale.
Note that this isn't demanding to be able to sell the particular program
at all.
Ian's DFSGv2 says nothing on the matter?
Perhaps the freedom we really want here is more like, being able to give
copies of the CDs away for $5, but being able to make our own additions
to the software and sell that for as much as we please.
Distribution
------------
Anyone must be able to redistribute copies of the software for no
more than the cost of distributing the work. Further, anyone must
be able to create value-added versions of the software, and sell
or give that away as they wish.
or is all we really want:
Distribution
------------
Anyone must be free to redistribute copies of the software, and to
charge for such redistribution in order to recoup their costs.
?
I, personally, think the ability to make a profit on free software is
important.
Cheers,
aj
[0] I realise gcc and gnat aren't under the Artistic license. Work with me
here. :)
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.
``Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.''
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