Re: reselling and distributing
root wrote:
> we are company from Lithuania and the are looking for new
> products to our market.
> PLease send us your full catalogue with prices, discounts, and
> license conditions.
"C. Falconer" wrote:
> Linux is free, almost every item of software is free. There are no charges
> for the operating system.
Right.
> Licensing - you can not charge more than a nominal fee for a disk/cd/tape -
> I don't think there has ever been a maximum price suggested, but if you're
> charging more than twice the media cost for a CD full of stuff available
> for no charge on the net - then something is awray.
This is a misconception. The Debian Free Software Guidelines
(which is adhered-to by anything in Debian's main archives) says
that the software may be sold commercially.
However, a lot of this software is under the GPL (GNU Public
License) which says that you must also provide source code along
with the GPL'ed binaries, and that the recipients have the same
rights as you under the GPL (including giving the software away
for free).
So you could sell Debian CDs for $1000 each (assuming anyone
would be uninformed enough to buy it at that price), but that
buyer could then turn around and give it away for free on a web
server and undercut you. This ensures that the software is
`usually' sold at only slighly more than reproduction costs.
--
Peter Galbraith, research scientist <GalbraithP@dfo-mpo.gc.ca>
Maurice Lamontagne Institute, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada
P.O. Box 1000, Mont-Joli Qc, G5H 3Z4 Canada. 418-775-0852 FAX: 775-0546
6623'rd GNU/Linux user at the Counter - http://counter.li.org/
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