On Sunday 29 Jun 2008, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: > On 28-Jun-08, at 10:46 AM, Raj Mathur wrote: > >> cant be sold - a service can be offered around foss. Note that all > >> foss developers charge service tax and not sales tax/vat > > > > Yes, FOSS can be sold, if you find someone to buy it. I sold (not > > serviced) the first copy of Linux in India, and if sales tax had > > been applicable back then in the mists of time, that's what I would > > have charged. > > and when you finally find a buyer for that bridge across the Yamuna > don't forget to add octroi and VAT
If you don't believe me, I'd suggest you get some competent lawyer to read the various licences at opensource.org and explain to you how none of them prevents you from selling the software. Just because a software is FOSS doesn't mean that anything prevents you from selling it. Of course, usually you won't be able to sell it since your potential client could just download it from the 'net, or get it free by other means. However, if she can't, or is willing to spend money on FOSS for any other reason it is perfectly legitimate and legal to sell her any FOSS package or distribution, and to charge any amount that she is willing to pay. Some licences like the GPL force you to provide source code for a nominal fee along with binaries at the user's request; however, that nominal fee applies to the source code, not to the binaries -- there is no limit on how much you can charge for the binaries. In short, not being able to sell FOSS is a limitation of the market (no one wants to buy it), rather than some intrinsic limitation in FOSS itself. Regards, -- Raju -- Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
