FSF & Conservancy Launch Copyleft.org To Promote Licenses Like The GPL

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FSF & Conservancy Launch Copyleft.org To Promote Licenses Like The GPL

The Software Freedom Conserfancy and Free Software Foundation have announced Copyleft.org...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTgzMjc

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Outside of innocuous tools that all can benefit from, I will never randomly write tools that could financially keep me going for free.

[Luke]

I will never use paid tools where free ones exist

Outside of innocuous tools that all can benefit from, I will never randomly write tools that could financially keep me going for free.

I will never use paid tools where free ones exist, or paid software at all. I don't TRUST closed binaries, and I would never pay for something where free and community mantained alternatives exist. I do not care if the paid version has more features (crossover vs WINE for instance), as my video news work is not monetized I cannot use pay software to produce it. Adobe can keep their GPU accelerated Mercury engine and video editors, Kdenlive is good enough right now

[zanny]

Outside of innocuous tools that all can benefit from, I will never randomly write tools that could financially keep me going for free.

There is a difference between free as in beer and free as in speech. Nothing says you cannot sell your GPL program - IE, that through the principal channel to get said software, you cannot get the binary or the source without paying for it. What you cannot do is deny source access to those who have binaries.

That is fine. But software freedom means that once you have sold it to someone, they now have the right to modify and redistribute your software as well.

That does not mean they will, and it does not mean you cannot sell it as a convenience and still see people buying it. Of course most people would realize its free software, and can get it elsewhere for beer free, but if you get enough money from client #1 who was the first to receive it to justify the development costs, than everybody wins. Client #1 gets software they want, you get paid, they get a perpetual community of maintainers to bug fix and improve it, and the world gets free software. Assuming that either you or client #1 ever distribute it. If nobody distributes GPLed binaries, then you have no obligation to provide source since no one should legitimately have the binary.

[GraysonPeddie]

Conserfancy

Conservancy

[staalmannen]

The biggest issue I have with copyleft is that it introduces "incopatibility bugs" between licenses that are similar in spirit. As a case in point: the super annoying license incompatibility between ZFS and Linux. Here Sun apparently explicitly worded the license in such a way that it would be GPL-incompatible.

Totally unnecessairy and annoying.

[geearf]

Outside of innocuous tools that all can benefit from, I will never randomly write tools that could financially keep me going for free.

Thank you for telling us, we are so much more happy now...

[ClosureSpin]

Outside of innocuous tools that all can benefit from, I will never randomly write tools that could financially keep me going for free.

When was the last time you sold a 'random tool' you made? Even if you do spontaneously write desktop applications that sell for millions - a pretty dubious claim in these times - the software industry just doesn't work like that anymore.

Seems to me you're just expressing negative emotion towards copyleft without much substance.

[Calinou]

Selling copies of digital works is, by definition, not substainable.

[prodigy_]

The biggest issue I have with copyleft is that it introduces "incopatibility bugs" between licenses that are similar in spirit. As a case in point: the super annoying license incompatibility between ZFS and Linux. Here Sun apparently explicitly worded the license in such a way that it would be GPL-incompatible.

Totally unnecessairy and annoying.

Yeah, some people are jerks who intentionally invent GPL-incompatible licenses. But there's no problem with copyleft and there's no problem with GPL. It's just some people are jerks and that's all.