[mythtv-users] TapeWorm Beta 4 - new features, and now, fewer bugs!

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Thu Apr 6 20:14:29 UTC 2006


On Apr 6, 2006, at 2:00 PM, Robin Neatherway wrote:

> On 4/6/06, Jeff Simpson <jeffsimpson at alum.wpi.edu> wrote:
>> But you're right, the fact that he's accepting payment in the form of
>> donations in his name does make it better than if he were accepting
>> payments in cash. If he were charging $10 for this program just for
>> himself, people would have been up in arms about it. The fact that he
>> is requiring payment at all should be the issue, not what he does  
>> with
>> the money he collects.
>
> I hope this isn't still related to the GPL. There is NOTHING in the
> GPL that prohibits you selling GPL'd products, the only thing is that
> you cannot deny access to the source code. That *could* be a problem,
> but as a lot of people have pointed out, it just doesn't apply here.
> It's Isaac's prerogative to get irritated if he sees it as someone
> trying to profit off his list, (assuming it is *his* list), and that
> really is that.

"Free Software" does not mean free of monetary or other cost. Even if  
he was not asking for anything, not even a donation, it would not be  
"free" because of the restrictive license. Because it would seem to  
clearly be a "derivative work" there might be some issues, but I am  
no lawyer and don't really care about them (the issues or the  
lawyers). But you are certainly allowed to build proprietary software  
on top of GPLed stuff, or TiVo and a lot of others would be out of  
business.

Just read just about anything written by Richard Stallman in the last  
30 years.

This does not mean I am unsympathetic to the charitable cause here,  
but that's a totally different issue.

In any case rules is rules.


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