GPL
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
Tue Oct 9 13:02:02 UTC 2007
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
>>> Free Software is also commercial! You can use Free Software to gain money
>>> even if you release your program under the GPL.
>> You can sell one copy - but you can't prevent that customer from giving
>> away copies to everyone else. Or you can give the program away yourself
>> and sell support.
>
> You can charge for as many copies as you want, as much as you can charge it
> for. You can also charge 0.
And so can anyone else, once you have released your first copy, so it is
likely that you'll be competing against someone charging 0.
> In any of the cases, you can also charge for support.
Good programs don't need much support - and who is going to buy a bad one?
>> If you use libraries (like the MySQL client) covered by the GPL and
>> distribute the program, the entire work must be under GPL terms -
>> although I think an earlier message had a link to an exception for MySql
>> for some other open source license terms.
>
> But you do not merely "use" libraries, you include them in the program.
>
> That's why :)
In most cases, the end user supplies his own copy of the library, which
he obtained as a standard component of his OS distribtution, so I think
the whole concept is on pretty shaky legal ground. But, I wouldn't want
to be the one paying the court costs to sort it out. And in the case of
MySql there's not much reason to, since PostgresSQL is arguably a better
database without any of the restrictions. Even better, use ODBC, perl
DBI, or a similar database independent interface and let the end user
choose his own database so there can be no claim that you have created a
derived work.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
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