>>Hence I would use the same license to keep off scammers. (...) > Anything but code should be possible to license similar to GPL, but not > allowing any commmercial use.
My two cents: First of all, define your use of 'scammer' here. From Wikipedia, I get "A confidence trick is also known as a con game, con, scam, grift, hustle, bunko, bunco, swindle, flimflam, gaffle, or bamboozle. (...) A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence." FlightProSim does not defraud its customers as far as I am aware. They seem to be actually getting a working copy of a flight simulation which is able to generate the advertized screenshots and has the advertized features. What they do is selling a product for a high price which is available elsewhere cheaper. Any consulting company will probably refer to this as a clever business strategy rather than a scam. I've noticed that I can buy newspapers on airports for a price which is somewhat higher than on the street. Usually the fact that I get the same newspaper for free once I enter the plane (or even at the gate in some airports) isn't advertized, I have to know. Would this make the newspaper vendors morally bad people (obviously it's not criminal to sell something which is available for free next door) or merely clever businessmen? Second, were is the damage? FlightProSim, as far as I can see, doesn't damage the Flightgear project in any way. It doesn't cost us money, after discovering that you get the product for free elsewhere, FlightProSim customers are as a rule not angry at Flightgear but at FlightProSim, so I fail to see how a changed license would benefit the project, as we're not after preventing damage for us here. There is arguably, from a certain moral perspective, damage done to FlightProSim customers since they pay for something they could have gotten for free. Note that this is not the same thing as fraud (see above), and note also that pretty much every supermarket sells products which we could get cheaper elsewhere. We (some of us) may feel that this is somehow morally wrong though. From this come two questions: * Can we all agree on moral standards what is 'right' and 'wrong' use of Flightgear? * If so, should we really take care to pre-empt all 'wrong' use? I seriously doubt we all agree on the same 'right' and 'wrong' - I've heard some voices arguing against any military simulation using Flightgear while others use it to write derived combat sims for instance. Suppose someone starts selling Flightgear with added customer service - so rather than the somewhat diffuse service offered in the forum, you get to talk to a service hotline in case something doesn't work. Is it morally justified to charge for this added service? If yes, how do we judge the standard of service and the price against what FlightProSim is (not?) offering? If no, would we not harm the project by preventing this service, as we are evidently not able to come up with a reliable customer service? I could go on a bit, the point is, once you actually start thinking about it, it's not a very clear-cut question. Which brings me to third, what damage do we do to the project by preventing commercial use? As has been mentioned, plenty - commercial use has in the past been used to contribute to the project, we'd not be included in Linux distributions, we'd prevent someone from offering a perfectly useful customer service,... And thus, in summary changing to a license preventing commercial use makes no sense. It doesn't prevent any damage done to the project, as no such damage exists. The idea is based on a perspective of 'right' and 'wrong' which is at best difficult to argue and for which we would not find any consensus among ourselves. The idea is further based on pre-empting 'misuse' of our work, which even if that could be defined and agreed upon, is difficult to establish in practice (do we for instance test every customer service and then only allow certified services to sell the product?). But a license change does clear and evident damage to the project. So we'd lose something but gain really nothing. Cheers, * Thorsten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
