Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
Alexandre Oliva
aoliva at redhat.com
Sat Jul 26 01:49:38 UTC 2008
On Jul 24, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> What are your objections to it, if any?
> It's not clear. Would that permit a piece of covered code to be
> included in a CDDL-covered work and vice versa?
I'm way beyond the point of believing you care or believe my
understanding of software licenses. So you tell me, would it?
> History shows that much software that is currently freely shared was
> once developed as proprietary versions
Was it derived from Free Software in the first place? Otherwise your
bringing it up is meaningless for the sake of the argument.
>> If anything, the payment for my work should be divided by all
>> users, so that each of them pays less.
> Suppose it is a work that requires 10 people to complete. Will you
> pay the other 9 up front first, knowing that any of them have the
> right to redistribute the code before you are paid?
I don't see how the question relates with what I proposed. Are we
talking past each other?
> Why would your customer pay for that first copy, knowing no one else
> has to share the cost? And you can't charge less than the full amount
Here's a plan:
- I charge the first customer, that hired the software development,
a fair price for the work I did.
- This customer is entitled to further distribute it or sell it, since
it's Free Software.
- I help the customer set up a plan to recover some of the investment:
I commit to not publishing the software before a certain date,
except to customers who join an "early access group", and we invite
others to join this group for a fee that shrinks as more customers
join. The fee is split over all previously-joining customers. None
of them are under any obligation to not distribute the software any
further.
- Once they reach a goal number or a date, I make the software
available to everyone.
>> The GPL does respect it, even though it sets forth conditions to stop
>> you from not respecting others' freedoms.
> The GPL forces a choice between one kind of restriction or another.
You're yet to show any evidence of an actual (rather than imagined)
restriction in the GPL.
--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
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