Chris Jones wrote: > Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: > > Free Software has *never* been about cost. It is about the freedoms > > to use, study, and modify the software. > > How would one ‘use, study, and modify the software’ if one could not > afford it in the first place?
The cost is not a monetary cost. It doesn't cost you dollars. The cost you pay is that your enhancements based upon free(dom) software also need to be free(dom) software too. If you base your project on GPL software, and gain the advantage of having it available for your use without writing it yourself or buying it, then your software should also be GPL. Give what you get in like kind. That is the cost. If it were more free, such as the BSD and MIT licenses, then you could simply take, take, take from the community, and give nothing back to the community. But the GPL requires a payment in like kind. (Personally I use the GPL for the majority of anything I create.) If someone is creating a project and thinks the cost of free software is too high, that they don't want to make their new project free and available for others to use, study and modify, then that is great. They don't need to do so. They can create whatever they want and license it with a non-free license. No problem. But then they should write or buy any code that they are using to base their project upon. They should not base their project upon the GPL work of others. On the other hand if you don't care if other people take your software and then modify it and close it and make it proprietary then you can always use one of the truly free licenses such as BSD, MIT or public domain too. This is a choice that any author has available to them. (Personally I use this choice for very small and relatively insignificant works like two line scripts.) Bob
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