[Zope-CMF] Re: Is unmodified CMF useless? Some Plone questions.

Casey Duncan casey at zope.com
Thu May 13 10:40:28 EDT 2004


On Thu, 13 May 2004 16:13:05 +0200
"Lennart Regebro" <regebro at nuxeo.com> wrote:

> From: "Casey Duncan" <casey at zope.com>
> > > > If you want to be able to charge for it, yes. But GPL:d
> > > > software, like CPS, can be modified and redistributed as long as
> > > > you don't charge for it.
> > >
> > > Not exactly:
> > >
> > >    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
> >
> > Apparently I haven't administered the proper mind-altering substance
> > to make any sense out of this. I'll try again later...much later ;^)
> 
> Basically, what that page points out that you can in fact make a
> product based on a GPL:d product and sell it.
> 
> That is correct, but you HAVE to include the source code, and the
> source code is freely distributable. Meaning that once you have sold
> it, that customer can give it away, and in fact, it is mostly in their
> interest to do so, to get a bigger userbase and therefore more
> community bugfixes.
> 
> And if you only can sell a commercial product once, did you really
> charge for the product, or did you charge for the programming time?
> Isn't selling one procuct once, actually consulting? :-) In practice,
> you can't extend GPL products and sell them. You can customize them
> and charge for the customizations, though.

Which is exactly why the document makes no sense to me because it
strongly implies a product revenue model, not a consulting model.

Whatever. Please continue using whatever license you see want, but know
that it is a disincentive for many would-be contributors, intrinsic NIH
notwitstanding.

-Casey



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