Re: [libreplanet-discuss] help with FSF incompatible but community oriented licence(s)

[Patrick]

Hi Ramana

I am not good at writing in as few words as possible...

"You want people to use your software (and derivatives?) without paying for it."
Yes, without having to pay for it.

With both projects, If the software was to be free as in beer forever, it would solve problems. Parents wouldn't get screwed over in the first and I could make money selling support as long as I could also insure that everyone who used the software knew that I wrote it in the second.

If I offered them both as closed source but free of charge then I "code in" messages to the end users. If someone sold them the software and then once they started to use, it, it said it was to remain free (as in cost) forever that would cut into their revenue model :) I could also sue the people who sold it

I've seen GIMP posted on Ebay for sale. I don't want this sort of thing to be done. I want to grant people the right to use it for free and to enforce that in court.


I have to take my kids out to the mall but I will respond to emails again soon, thanks for the feedback... BIAB





Is it okay if I post my last response to you to the list?

On 12-10-03 12:58 PM, Patrick wrote:

For the second project I think GPL is the right license: by law anyone using its code or part of the code must show the "based upon $project created by $you" line, also you can get revenue by both selling binaries (with the source attached) and providing support.

For the first one GPL is also good as no one can legally "close" the code.

Hi Marco

Here is the thing though.... Most parents don't know what close or open sourced even is. If I distribute it as a close source application and have a notice pops up that states this software is only to be distributed free of charge, if you paid for it contact so-and-so so that we can defend your rights. That ought to be a deterrent.

Also keep in mind that FSF approved licenses are about freedom not about money ("free as in free speech" not "free as in free beer").

I do know about this but I don't think that FSF licences protect communities only end users.

It's not okay to say that anyone in Indonesia can use this software for whatever use they desire and never have to give back anything but but it is okay to say that Walmart can do this, if they only use it internally. Yet Walmart is economically larger then this country of 237M people:

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0718-worlds_largest.html

GPL is very wrong for me, I hope to find other licences that will protect the charitable nature of the first project and protects my right to be acknowledged in the second project. The GPL will do this to some degree in the licence but how many end users read the licence, I want something that will have to be displayed to them

On 12-10-03 01:32 PM, Ramana Kumar wrote:

I don't understand how making your software non-free is solving your problems.

These are the problems you said you have:

1. You want people to use your software (and derivatives?) without paying for it.
2. You want credit for your software, in particular, that any people using it can easily find out that you wrote it.

(If I have got them wrong, or missed anything, please correct.)

Please explain how you can solve these two problems by making your software non-free (in as few words as you can).

Please also restate briefly why you cannot solve these two problems while also making your software free.

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 6:08 PM, Patrick <patrick@spellingbeewinnars.org> wrote:

Hi Michal

I think no legal solution will solve this problem completely (e.g. you
can buy illegally copied discs with proprietary software).  A license
that allows selling and requires including appropriate attribution
notices could solve that misinformation problem in some cases.  You want
parents to know about your software, in the past discs sold with
collections of software could be useful for this, while a no-selling
license would disallow making it known this way.

I don't really want to do this but I have thought about selling binaries and source without makefiles. The code base will include Ada and I think a lot of people will have trouble compiling it without a makefile(or GPR file)

This seems sneaky and underhanded but might be a setup from shipping fully closed source.

I am not blaming him but I think if he chose a different licence for
his work, things might have been different. What Torvalds did to him
was specifically allowed by the GPL his desire to have people refer to
the OS as GNU/Linus is based on honour and not law.

Would a legal solution be as effective as requiring making the source
code available?  It clearly doesn't work for Chinese tablets with Linux.

China and India are my biggest fears. Thousands upon thousands of laboratory jobs have been sent to these places. Here in Ontario, Canada the biosciences sector is all but destroyed. It won't help to sell closed source software to these markets but it could make sense to give closed source and charge for support. This really seems like the only viable option but I really want to find something that will make sense and be source included though...

[0] https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#require

I am not going to be able to live up to the 4 freedoms of software but I hope I can live up to 3 !