[Gslug-general] BSD

[Jason Self]

James, I'm not sure where you received the information that someone
must make a GPL-covered program available at no charge. This was also
mentioned in the video that you linked to, so perhaps you saw it in
that video & thought it was true. It's not. There is absolutely no
requirement to do this. For more information, please see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.

Now, what you're probably thinking is something along the lines that
"hey... if my source code is available then people have no reason to
buy my software."

My hope, though, is that you're not just looking to charge people
money to the exclusion of everything else. Hopefully you would also
want your free software project to be successful, appeal to people,
and to create a large community around your software. I certainly
would wish all the best to your free software project.

While it's true that someone could fork your free software program,
that is by no means a guarantee that they will. This is because
forking a project brings up other issues that are best avoided if at
all possible. If you examine the free software community, you'll see
that forking doesn't happen very often just for this reason.

As long as your free software project is doing right by it's users,
there is no motivation for them to fork.

It used to be that everyone got the program and everyone got the
source code. That didn't change until these last few decades when
people started to think that it was okay to give users software
without access to the source code and without the necessary freedoms.
Just as, it seems, you're thinking about doing by not wanting to
include the source code & disliking the GPL because it requires you to
make the source code available. You can thank Microsoft for that. They
were one of the biggest forces behind the proprietary software model.

The GPL seeks to maintain that original freedom by ensuring that the
source code will always remain free software. In the free software
world the user has the source code and the user is in control. With
non-free software the user doesn't have the source code and is no
longer in control. They now have to contact the developer and beg them
to make changes: "Please, Mr/Ms. Developer, make this change."
Sometimes the developer will listen to them and do that. Sometimes
not. Either way, the software developer is in control. The developer
has subjugated the user. A good speech from Richard Stallman if you'll
try to keep an open mind & think about the ethical issues he's
bringing up: http://sbos.in/RMS_Lection.ogg.

Either way, I think I've said just about all I have to say on this
topic. Now it's time to go to work. Happy Friday!