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List:       freebsd-chat
Subject:    Re: First test of GPL in court
From:       Cliff Sarginson <csfbsd () raggedclown ! net>
Date:       2002-02-28 15:46:53
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On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 03:16:35PM +0000, j mckitrick wrote:
> | FWIW he has never said you can't make profit selling GPL'ed software,
> | you can charge as much as you want for it, but I've never seen any
> | company making money on that, except a few Linux distribution vendors,
> | which anyway use code created by other people, so that doesn't really
> | count.
> 
> I've been racking my brain for an example of something that technically
> *could* be done but for practical reasons *isn't* done in business.  I
> can't think of any, but if I do, I'll post it.  Maybe politics would be
> better, like in totalitarian countries where they say 'Of course any
> other party is free to run for office' but no one does, or has any
> chance of winning.
> 
> RMS doesn't have to say you can't sell software, but he's essentially
> made it all but impossible from a business point of view.
> 
Mmm. I believe "Smoothwall" have solved this conundrum, I am not exactly
sure how they have done it, but they release a "GPL" version of their
firewall for free, but also have home and commercial versions (which I
gather they make quite a good living out of). I believe the guy who runs
it is or has been in long discussions with FSF about this and seems to
have resolved any issues. The firewall is based on a very stripped
version of Redhat using ipchains, squid etc...plus a web management
interface.

There used to be (maybe still is) a link from GNU to some outfit trying
to start a commercial company based on GPL software. I joined the list
for a while, just as a lurker. I would say 90% of the mail I read
concerned discussions about how much everyone should get paid, whether
the programmers should get paid the same as the salesmen, that kind of
thing. I didn't see anything about *what* they would sell. It apparently
had the FSF's blessing though. 

-- 
Regards
   Cliff Sarginson -- <csfbsd@raggedclown.net>

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