Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!stiatl!meo
From: meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Copyleftability
Message-ID: <8300@stiatl.UUCP>
Date: 20 Dec 89 20:20:38 GMT
Organization: Roadkills-R-Us
Lines: 46

In article <970007@gore.com> jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) writes:
|
|1.  You can sell it as much as you want (and, as usual, find customers), as
|long as you follow the license.  The major limitations are:
|
|    1.	You cannot deny your custromers the right to distribute it further
|	(they, of course, must also obey the GNU GPL if they distribute it).
|
|    2.	  (cost to customer of distribution with source)
|	- (cost to customer of distribution without source)
|          ----------------------------------------------------------------
|	  (no greater than a reasonable media, shipping & handling charge)
|
|So, it is wrong to say that you are forbidden to sell copylefted code,
|though you won't be able to sell it using the currently common approach

As I have stated before, I have no more use for the "common aproach"
than does the FSF. However, there are some problems with your "limitations"
upon what I can do.

1) If I release good, quality software, that meets a real need, that doesn't
need lots of support (I *said* quality*), with good documentation, then
why on earth would people buy it if they could get it free?

2) A lot of other people, such as 103% of all the MIS-heads in the world,
are going to lump it in with all that "public domain bulletin board stuff"-
useless garbage and probably full of viruses, or at least nasty bugs (their
perceptions, not mine). They would summarily have someone on their staff
shot who even LET the stuff in the door.

This does NOT appear to give me a good chance at making any decent living
(ie, lower middle class income or above) off the software.

Now, people are complaining about Peter's not addressing certain arguments.
Well, these same people HAVE NOT yet addressed, to the best of my knowledge,
some of mine. Do you people realize what goes on in a software firm? There's
not just the cost of the staff (including funding future projects, not just
paying off old debts), but the cost of the building, legal stuff, accounting
stuff, marketing, distribution, phones, benefits (vacation, insurance, etc),
and so on, etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

So be sure when you blithely talk of "recovering the cost of the
software development" that you realize not all of us want to hack
the night away for a year, just to give the world a birthday present.

-Miles