[Mageia-dev] Seamonkey package

[Michael Scherer]

Le jeudi 17 mars 2011 à 21:05 -0400, andre999 a écrit :
> Michael Scherer a écrit :

> > So I cannot distribute it by selling a CD, since this would subject the
> > distribution to a fee.
> 
> Only if the CD contained only (or primarily) Mozilla products would I 
> say that you would reason for concern.  For an officiel Mageia iso, that 
> would be very far from the case.

So the people ( commercial abusers ) who want to sell Firefox can simply
say "you can pay to get Mozilla Firefox and Gimp and VLC and Audacity"
and then say "but that's not primarily Mozilla" and get away with it.
While maybe this is so simple, I doubt that no one thought of it before.

> > The article of the FSF explicitly list this as a right for free software
> > users http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html .
> 
> That is a provision of unmodified GPL, and not a requirement of all open 
> source licenses.  In fact, even the FSF admits that not all open source 
> licenses have this provision.

See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
"Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is
part of the definition of free software."

> The FSF page
>   <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses>
> lists the Xinetd license
>   <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Xinetd_License>
> as a free software license which is not compatible with GPL.
> 
> Why ?  It cannot be redistributed for a fee.

No, I think you misinterpret this :

"The author (Panagiotis Tsirigotis) grants permission to use, copy,
and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose 
and without fee, ..."

That's the granted permission that is offered by the author without fee.

Ie, _I_, as a user or coder, do not pay anything to have the right to
distribute, use, copy the software and documentation for any purpose. 

Moreover "any purpose" seems to me rather clear, and for me, that also
mean also "sell it".  

Finally, there is also several examples of licenses that forbid charging
for distribution :
* Aladdin Free Public License
* AT&T Public License, point 7
* Reciprocal Public License ( first point )
* Simple Machines License
* YaST License
        
And all of thoses are in the section "Non-Free Software Licenses". 

-- 
Michael Scherer