[gberardi]

Originally Posted by Baltar

Ok perhaps you can explain this to me -- how the hell am I going to make money if I create software and release it under the GPL?

I never understand this question. There are ways to do it, and you even admit it yourself that there ARE in fact ways to do it, yet because you can't easily do it the way YOU want to do it, somehow it is an invalid license to use?

The GPL license allows anyone to freely distribute the software. This means that nobody will ever have to pay for it. This goes way beyond the "freedom to modify the source code", which can be argued to be "free as in speech". However, allowing people to distribute the software freely makes it "free as in beer" since nobody has to pay for it.


Can you give some examples? As far as I know, there are very few things one can do to make money from open source. The usual response that's given is "providing support" for open source software. That may work well for Red Hat or Novell, and perhaps for those people who want to be system administrators for Linux or provide tech support for other open source systems. But what about those of us who want to make our own software? Support as a means of making money is only feasible if you're making software for businesses. Home users are not going to pay you much, if anything, for tech support.

Let's assume that we're not talking about leveraging open source and free software to run your own business. If you want to package software like a toaster and sell it, then the GPL is not for you because it assumes that you are not trying to artificially restrict what someone can do with software. Selling an application as a product that you can purchase is not exactly going to work, as you said.

That is why people keep referring to support, and interestingly enough, the people who usually suggest it as "the only thing" they ever hear are the people who argue that you can't make money from open source. Everyone else knows that there are hundreds of ways to make money from open source. There is even a website that lists them.

Most of them are variations on support: selling books, manuals, magazines, proprietary add-ons, and consulting based on an open source product.

As for people redistributing an application, you can sell software. One of the things that the GPL specifies is that you don't need to distribute the source code with the binary files. Another thing it specifies is that you could sell your binary files for as much as you think the market can allow.

If your business model depends on people NOT distributing your application for free, then don't use a license that tells them that they can. No one complains about the business feasibility of the Creative Commons licenses just because anyone can redistribute works licensed under it at no cost. Why is the GPL so special that people MUST show that it is not going to allow people to sell software like toasters? And why do people have to be so closed-minded to think that if you can't sell software like a toaster that you can't make money?

And by the way, the GPL is ironically enforced by copyright law which restricts people's rights to other people's creations. Without copyright law, the GPL would be unenforceable. If people didn't want to protect their creations then the GPL wouldn't even be possible.

Ironic? No, I am pretty sure that the GPL is just like any other EULA. Instead of specifying exactly what you can and cannot do, it says what you cannot restrict from someone else. Nothing cute is happening here. Stallman was purposefully using copyright to guarantee that free software will remain free software.

Which companies are against open source? Of course Microsoft is extremely scared of the open source movement because they can only prosper as a monopoly. But who else would care so much about it? Open source isn't a threat to anyone else in my opinion. Perhaps to a few companies who've managed attain vendor lock-in, but how many of those are out there? If a company is only doing well by using vendor lock-in (like Microsoft is) then they'll crumble eventually with or without the open source movement.

Lots of companies enjoy vendor lock-in, and the SCO lawsuit involving IBM, Novell, and a few high-profile software developers shows that Microsoft (although perhaps they were just behind the scenes) isn't the only one who wanted the courts to say that the GPL is invalid.

This business model wouldn't work for other kinds of software, especially software that targets the home user market. Have you seen Red Hat make any money from Fedora Core? Red Hat has explicitly separated its commercial business-targeted Linux distro from Fedora Core:

"The Fedora Project was created in late 2003, when Red Hat Linux was discontinued. Red Hat recommended that commercial Red Hat Linux users switch to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which continues to be Red Hat's only officially-supported Linux distribution, while providing Fedora Core for more casual users."

I'm not disputing that it's possible to make money somehow from open source software in general. However that doesn't mean that everyone who makes software is interested in those ways of making money. Personally I prefer to make a product and sell it, rather than develop a product, give it away for free, and then charge for services related to it (if that's even possible for that particular product).

Ok, Fedora software ends up in RHEL. Yes, Red Hat doesn't make money directly, but I am sure that the bottom line is improved by the fact that a lot of people are testing its software for free.

The GPL is not appropriate for software-as-a-toaster. I am pretty sure that no one argues this point. Still, software-as-a-toaster isn't exactly the only way to make money from software, and neither is selling support. Heck, you can even dual-license your software, and it has worked out well for Trolltech so far. I could keep pointing out examples, but someone will continually point out that it only works for this special case or that certain company's business model.

In the end, if you don't want to use it, no one is forcing you to do so. GNU ninjas aren't going to hack into your computer and change the license on all of your code. You won't wake up in the middle of the night, find that your software license has been changed to the GPL, and scream, "NOOOOOOO!!!!! STALLMAN!!!!!"