Royalties and Free Software?

[João Miguel Neves]

A Seg, 2003-08-04 às 21:18, Wouter Vanden Hove escreveu:
> How does this fit into the paradigm of Free Software?
> 
> Would it be possible for FSF Europe to become a member of such
> organisations in order to receive some part of this money, that
> rightfully belongs to ourselves? It could be used for funding  Free
> Software Projects, now mostly stockholders of large publishing-companies
> receive them.
> 
Maybe, we haven't tried that in Portugal.

> Or should the law be changed to exempt copyleft-holders from that kind
> of royalties? Have this issues ever brought up before? In all legal
> documents on Free Software Licesnes I've till now, I never came across
> this discrepany.
> 
We (ANSOL) brought up this issue in Portugal recently. The EUCD
implementation includes the coverage of digital media by the media tax.
We were against it, because it taxes legal distribution like Free
Software.

AFAIK there's no issues regarding licenses in this case. For instance,
the GPL allows you to get money to cover media costs for distribution of
the source code of a previously distributed program.

> Or does this situation exists in Belgium alone?
> 

Unfortunately not.

-- 
João Miguel Neves <joao at silvaneves.org>
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