Aragorn (registered Guh-NÜ-slash-Linux user #223157) wrote: > > On Wednesday 06 December 2006 18:19, Alexander Terekhov stood up and > addressed the masses in /gnu.misc.discuss/ as follows...: > > > Aragorn (registered Guh-NÜ-slash-Linux user #223157) wrote: > > [...] > >> The word "commercial" is thrown in by this person solely for the purpose > >> of bloating his argument. There is nothing in the GPL that states that > >> software cannot be sold commercially, > > > > "So now they're going to try the hard work of cracking 'Freedom'. Free, > > well that means stuff you don't pay for" > > > > -- Eben Moglen ("Moglen: How we'll kill the Microsoft Novell deal") > > Freedom doesn't mean that it has to be free of charge, although generally > Free Software does indeed come free of charge. > > Equating "free" to "free of charge" is a colloquialism. It's not the FSF's > fault that people tend to take rumors and misinterpretations for truths.
IBM: "65. Among the "further restrictions" that the GPL and LGPL do not permit are royalties or licensing fees (Ex.27 ¶¶ 2, 3; Ex. 26 ¶¶ 2, 4) (although fees can be collected for "the physical act of transferring a copy" of the code or for warranty protection). (Ex. 27 ¶ 1; Ex. 26 ¶ 1.) If modified works or machine-readable versions of GPL- or LGPL- licensed software are distributed, they must be licensed "at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." (Ex. 27 ¶ 2 (emphasis added); Ex. 26 ¶ 2; see also Ex. 27 ¶ 3; Ex. 26 ¶ 4.)" REDACTED MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF IBM'S MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY JUDGMENT in SCO v. IBM (see Groklaw). And drunken trio team of judges lead by prolific and learned Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook went even further: http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/fdocs/docs.fwx?submit=showbr&shofile=06-2454_008.pdf ------- Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and EVANS, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Does the provision of copyrighted software under the GNU General Public License (GPL) violate the federal antitrust laws? Authors who distribute their works under this license, devised by the Free Software Foundation, Inc., authorize not only copying but also the creation of derivative worksand the license prohibits charging for the derivative work. People may make and distribute derivative works if and only if they come under the same license terms as the original work. Thus the GPL propagates from user to user and revision to revision: neither the original author, nor any creator of a revised or improved version, may charge for the software or allow any successor to charge. Copyright law, usually the basis of limiting reproduction in order to collect a fee, ensures that open- source software remains free: any attempt to sell a derivative work will violate the copyright laws, even if the improver has not accepted the GPL. The Free Software Foundation calls the result copyleft. [...] The GPL covers only the software; people are free to charge for the physical media on which it comes and for assistance in making it work. Paper manuals, and the time of knowledgeable people who service and support an installation, thus are the most expensive part of using Linux. -------- So concluded prolific and learned Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, and added that: "Copyright and patent laws give authors *a right* to charge more [than zero], so that they can recover their fixed costs [and thus promote innovation], but they do *not require* authors to charge more." "This [and the fact that "the Supreme Court has permitted producers to initiate predatory-pricing litigation"] does not assist Williams, however, because his legal theory is faulty substantively." You hear that, Williams? (Does Easterbrook mean Wallace or Gates?) You are not required to charge more once a piece of your intellectual property exists. And so it is perfectly okay for copyleft ("free as in freedom") to suppress *a right* given by copyright law and *require* to charge zero to cover costs of creating a piece of intellectual property to exist. Impeccable logic. Right, Aragorn (registered Guh-NÜ-slash-Linux user #223157)? regards, alexander. -- http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1139911511108 (Law.com - Meet the DotCommunist) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss