Can I sell fedora?

[Erik Hemdal]

> On Sun, 2004-10-24 at 13:04, dyzelinis wrote:
> > I think I have to explain what I want to do.
> > 
> > Actually I don't want to sell it. I want to buy it! And I am looking for
> > someone to sell it to me. I can not just have it for free. It may sound a
> > little bit tricky, but there is same tricky law in my country. Our government
> > has some kind of compensations for those who by OS. Some kind of anti-piracy
> > compaign.
> >
>  
> > This compensation is ment primarily for MS Windows, but I am going to install
> > FC3 on my new PC. So I want to know is it legal for some company to sell Fedora
> > to me for the price it wants? 

As I understand the GPL, the answer is no.  One can't sell GPL software
for whatever one wants, one can only recover the cost of distributing
media, etc.  You can argue that it costs $100 to burn a CD in your
country (maybe your ISP charges by the mile and electricity is very
expensive) but it seems dubious from here.  Your (the OP) own messages
indicate that you know a $100 price is inflated.

It seems as though your friend would run afoul of the GPL somewhere in
here.  After all you paid him for his $100 costs by buying the software;
then you paid him more by sharing the tax refund.  So he's profiting
beyond his costs.  That's unfair, even if there's no paper trail to
prove what happened.

You could, of course, just keep the money from your tax refund.  But now
you are profiting from GPL software, and you can't do that either under
the GPL.

And as was posted elsewhere, this reads like tax fraud.  In my country,
I am not allowed to make up some paperwork for something that is free
just to make it look like I bought it.  You should talk to an accountant
or tax lawyer in your country and get trustworthy advice.  If you do,
post and tell us what he or she said.

Alternatively, if you want to spend $100 on software, buy one of Red
Hat's for-pay distributions of Linux.  Then you can get it for free with
your tax refund.  And you can know that you are supporting the primary
sponsor of Fedora.

Erik