[mythtv] Licensing issues

[Michael T. Dean]

Paul Huff wrote:

> Actually, you sold it for $100M, but thats besides the point, lol.  My 
> plan is to get this as intuitive and basic as possible (as inspired by 
> my father-in-law who's frustrated with his current expensive and 
> complicated setup) so that anyone, techie or not, can use it without 
> ever needing a manual or being coached.  I live in a rather wealthy 
> area where people drop thousands of dollars on difficult and 
> complicated "high-tech" high confusion setups.  If I can give them 
> something easy, consolidated, intuitive as well as "high-tech" and 
> new...they'd eat it up.  And I'd have fun in the meantime.  I have no 
> plans on going big with this...just some joe schmo setting up systems 
> in his local metropolitan area.  $900-1500 for the parts and whatever 
> I wanna charge for the setup and markup equals a nice weekend profit.  
> So ya I guess I can use the system with the software (modified as it 
> may be) and if someone wants the source they're more than welcome to 
> have it.  No one who knows what to do with it would be paying me for 
> this anyway, lol.

Yeah.  I wasn't commenting on your plan, but on the general idea that 
you can't sell GPL software that seems to be so prevalent and trying to 
point out why most GPL software is distrubuted free of charge (not 
because you have to, but because someone else can).

Mike

> Paul
>
> On 11/17/05, *Michael T. Dean* < mtdean at thirdcontact.com 
> <mailto:mtdean at thirdcontact.com>> wrote:
>
>     Johnathon Meichtry wrote:
>
>     > I say good luck and I hope you can turn it into a real money making
>     > venture. The more commercial organisations selling and
>     shrinkwrapping
>     > MythTV the better.  In terms of evolution and development it is only
>     > early days but if major companies like Hauppauge etc. can ship
>     > media/video players and not provide updates thereafter then I can't
>     > see why you couldn't do the same with MythTV - as long as it
>     works as
>     > advertised and the consumer is getting value for money what does it
>     > matter.
>     >
>     > In terms of LGPL and GPL licensing there is no reason why you cannot
>     > make money from distributing a product containg LGPL and
>     GPL.  My case
>     > in point are the million of media players and STB's being
>     shipped by
>     > retailers and manufactuers.  For example Yahoo Broadband TV
>     in  Japan,
>     > their STB runs Open Source embedded linux with all the various
>     > trappings and utilities/apps with their HTML UI.  The irony is
>     that if
>     > you call them up and ask them for a copy of the source (which is a
>     > requirement under GPL) they will tell you to take a walk and say
>     it's
>     > developed in-house and confidential.
>
>     That part would be against the license agreement.  If they
>     distribute a
>     product containing GPL'ed code, they must make the code--and
>     changes to
>     the code--available free of charge to anyone who purchased a "binary"
>     version of the software.
>
>     However, you're right about the fact that you can sell GPL'ed
>     software.
>     (Why do people think it's against the license agreement to sell GPL
>     software?  It's not freeware...)  The only requirement is that you
>     then
>     make the source available to the people who buy it.  So, if I made a
>     GPL'ed app and sold it for $100,000,000, I'm not breaking the GPL.  Of
>     course, the guy who bought the app would ask for the source (which I'd
>     have to provide free of charge) and start distributing the same
>     app for
>     much less (perhaps even free--and he's fully within his GPL rights to
>     redistribute for free or for some charge)--at which point nobody would
>     be crazy enough to pay my $1M price tag.  However, since I found
>     someone
>     to pay $1M, I don't care as I'm sitting back on the beach sipping my
>     margarita...  ;)
>
>     See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html .
>
>     Mike
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     mythtv-dev mailing list
>     mythtv-dev at mythtv.org <mailto:mythtv-dev at mythtv.org>
>     http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>     <http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>mythtv-dev mailing list
>mythtv-dev at mythtv.org
>http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>  
>