From: jbuck@forney.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Suggestions for the free Unix projects
Date: 4 Oct 92 23:12:26 GMT
Organization: U. C. Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: forney.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Oct4.124453.10061@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>	If I am essentially "selling" a "free" distribution, it doesn't
>matter if I call my activity "charging copying fees", "documentation and
>support fees" or something else entirely; it is likely that some part of
>my profit is attributable to the GNU code.  Article 2(b) of the GPL puts
>any work containing it as a component in question if I bugfix the GNU
>code so that it will work a particular way for 386BSD.

No, it doesn't.  It simply means that your modified version of Gnu code,
if distributed, must be freely redistributable by whoever you give it to.
It doesn't put it "in question", it's cut and dried: derivative works
of Gnu code must be distributed according to Gnu terms.  You may, however,
charge whatever you want.  The "mere aggregation" clause of the GPL means
that other programs distributed on the same medium are not affected.
Nothing in the GPL anywhere forbids your making a profit, or distinguishes
in any way between for-profit and non-profit uses of Gnu code.

>	The problem arises from the non-specific wording of the license and
>the fact that I can not make a profit on the distribution of the code.  Does
>my profit derive from some portion of the  code rather than the code as a
>whole?  

Irrelevant!  The Gnu folks don't care whether you are making money or not.

I can possibly make a case for this if the GNU code is partitioned
>as a seperate element.  I can probably even hedge this by charging double
>"copying costs" -- once for the binaries, once for the sources.  But I can
>not make a profit... although this may violate 3(c).  This is risk reduction,
>not risk elimination.

>	Since the GNU software is not a seperate element in either 386BSD
>or Linux, this put me in a difficult situation.  The license disallows me
>making a profit, but I may charge a "reasonable copying cost", but my
>idea of reasonable might be "Pays for the person copying plus the shipping
>plus my time for the application of my management skills plus my flooring
>plus my taxes, etc."... GNU hasn't really defined what they deem reasonable
>to mean.

You keep repeating this!  RMS has repeatedly said that he thinks that
profiting from software distribution and services is something he is FOR,
not against, and that profiting from activities like this is legitimate
and praiseworthy.  Here's the deal:

1. Profit is reasonable.  So is making a living.  Since the FSF folks are
trying to establish that treating software as a service rather than a
product is an economically viable option, they are actually interested in
having people who follow their philosophy make money, believe it or not.

2. Charging a similar price for a binary distribution as for a source
distribution, or proportionately more if more tapes, CD-ROMs, etc, are
required, is reasonable.

3. If, when the customers hear the figure you want for a source
distribution, they shout "you're crazy", and they are experienced enough
in the industry to know what things cost, you're not being reasonable.

Here's the deal: if you distribute modified versions of Gnu code, the
people you distribute to must be able to get source to your modifications,
and they must be able to give them to others.  You are free to include
your own proprietary programs along with Gnu programs in the same medium,
and these programs can even communicate with the Gnu tools.  See, for
example, Lucid's modified version of Gnu Emacs.  They've modified it to
work with their proprietary C++ development system, but the modifications
are valuable on their own.  The modified Lucid Emacs is freely
redistributable; the rest of the Lucid development system is not.  How
does the FSF feel about this?  As best I can tell, they are happy.

The rest of your analysis is similarly misguided.
--
Joe Buck	jbuck@ohm.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.sys.mac.advocacy