Re: Mgetty should be in non-free?

[John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org>]

Jules Bean writes:
> Indeed the artistic and GPL make the same restriction.

I wrote:
> The GPL does not make any such restriction.  The Artistic does include a
> similar one, but converts it to a request in the definitions.

Jules Bean quotes from the GPL:
> You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
> you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

And writes:
> This is the only mention of fees in the main portion of the text.  Since
> it doesn't give permission to sell, I assumed that permission doesn't
> exist.  Granted, the 'fee for the physical act of transferring a copy'
> gives any distributor some freedom of interpretation here.

It places no restriction or limit on the fee.  You can sell a CD containing
only emacs for $100,000 if you wish, or install gcc on a pc and advertise
it as "Complete with C compiler!".  This is quite different from the
license in question which forbids you to sell the software for "big bucks"
or to bundle it with a modem, or the Artistic which says that you may only
charge a "reasonable" copying fee.
-- 
John Hasler                This posting is in the public domain.
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