juridical Question on software and GPL

[Moritz Sinn]

Frank Heckenbach <frank at g-n-u.de> writes:

> Moritz Sinn wrote:
>
>> yes, that's what the part of gpl that i quoted in my last mailing
>> says. and that's why you cannot earn money with programming free software.
>
> As others have explained, paying for programming doesn't have to
> mean royalties per copy. Quite a few who make money with programming
> free software are probably in this list, so making such a broad
> statement in public, telling us that it's impossible to do what we
> just do, seems a bit silly ...

ok, what you can do is: ask money before publishing it or ask money for
publishing it. but you'll always earn more money with proprietary
software. and that's what i meant when i said you have to decide
whether its about software or money. if money is the main goal of course
closed source is more successfull. if its about the software, the art,
the joy of programming what so ever.. free software is the better.

i think we should be honest with that. free software is about the
software and when it comes to business it has many disadvantages. that
doesn't mean that we have to write closed software, it means that there
is something wrong with business, because free software is better, which
doesn't mean that closed software can also be very good out of the
technical point of view.

>> afaik it is not allowed to publish gpl software under a second
>> license. i don't know how mysql does that.
>
> There are many cases of GPL-dual-licensing. One of the most
> prominent ones is Perl. As I saw your directory on CPAN, I thought
> you might have known that ... ;-)

ok, i thought perl would have its own license but i would be allowed to
publish my perl modules under which ever license i want.

regards,
 moritz

--