At the US border

Simon simon80-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Mon Oct 2 23:46:25 UTC 2006


I would have thought that removing the other freedoms is a prerequisite to
forcing people to pay licensing fees.  I agree that fees aren't a nice
thing, but it is completely legal to sell GPL licensed software that you
don't own the copyright for, as long as you license it under the GPL.  You
could almost say it's pointless to do this, but RHEL is a prominent example
of it actually being done, and CentOS is an example of why it may be
pointless (I know, the money buys support too).  So, I could correct myself
to "not just free of cost" instead of not free of cost, but one must
recognize that freedom of speech and being cost free are two different
things, and it's valid to refer to one by itself.  Then again, I also
support freedom from licensing fees, I don't much like them either.

On another note, some IT establishments seem to enjoy paying fees if it buys
them assurance of 24/7 support.  However, said establishments probably also
enjoy paying various other fees as well, that's my impression.  And by
enjoy, I mean not feeling nauseous about spending tens of thousands of
dollars on individual software licenses.

On 9/30/06, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> On 9/29/06, Simon <simon80-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > I worry about alienating myself if I say something about "free as in
> > freedom", but I think the most sane sounding thing to say, if you want
> > to clarify, is that you meant free to use, modify, and share, not free
> > of cost.
>
> This morning, Chris De Bona pointed out the important point that "free
> of charge" is, in fact, one of the vital aspects.
>
> One of the relevant freedoms is "freedom from licensing fees," and
> whenever people run up the flagpole the "free as in speech, not free
> as in beer," they *are* contradicting that.
>
> There are a multiplicity of freedoms involved, and one of them *is*
> freedom from people sending you  licensing bills.
>
>
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