On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 18:56 -0400, Sean wrote: > GPL software has very many freedoms associated with it, way more > than most proprietary licenses. It is not _absolutely_ free though. > Is that what you object to? The fact that it's not given away > absolutely freely? Man, that really is communistic, someone who > wants everything to be absolutely free without having to pay > in some way. The GPL demands a modest form of payment for > extensions + distribution. Such a great deal compared to > a typical proprietary license! Actually Sean, this isn't quite right. Here's a basic summery of what the GPL is about. If you use the GPL for the license of your project it means that you can sell the end result, i.e. the binary version, for whatever you want based the market for said project. The key is that you have to make available to anyone who wants it the source code for this project. You can charge a nominal fee to cover the cost of delivering the source code (if you press CD's of buy ftp services). However, as with the Linux distros, you don't have to charge for either the binary or the source if you don't want to. If you actually take lines of source from a GPL licensed project and use that source in the source for your product then you have created a derivative product and therefor must license it as GPL. If, however, your source code only call GPL'ed libraries (said libraries are LGPL'ed) and/or use make use of external GPL tools and apps in your source you do not have to release your stuff under the GPL. That's it. Simple, more or less. This goes for GPL 2x, of course. -- Joe Klemmer <klemmerj@xxxxxxxxxxx>
