Patrick said:
Parents of autistic kids are already under
enormous stress and most won't end up knowing there was a free as in
beer alternative. parisites will swoop in an screw over the parents by
sellign them the software.
It's good that you're concerned that people might be taken advantage of but I
think your concerns are unfounded. There is remarkable self-correcting power in
the world. If someone is charging too much for a copy of the software someone
else will come in and undercut them by offering the same software at a lower
cost (maybe even free) and if the price is a big problem word *will* get around
so it isn't necessary for the license to mandate that the software be
distributed at no cost.
This is also discussed in Selling Free Software [1], specifically the "Will a
higher distribution price hurt some users?" section.
As an example, internet access isn't available everywhere and so the requirement
to distribute it at no cost means that I couldn't give copies to people for,
say, $5 each on CD to cover my costs of buying and mailing CDs because that's
not without cost.
Not only is distributing for a fee not a problem that you need to worry about
for the reasons I stated but mandating that there be no cost could also be a
hindrance to others that want to help.
[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html