Reply With QuoteI'm sorry, but you can sell free software under the gnu public license. Yes, it is a little misleading to do something like this, but it is legal.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
Phoronix News Bot
Open-Source Projects Are Getting Ripped On Amazon
Phoronix: Open-Source Projects Are Getting Ripped On Amazon
It's been brought to my attention today by a Phoronix reader that several major open-source projects are being ripped off and sold for-profit on Amazon by a small company out of the United Kingdom. FlightGear, InkScape, and Scribus are among the free software projects being affected right now and Amazon apparently has yet to catch onto this or act...
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTAyNg
Junior Member
Selling
I'm sorry, but you can sell free software under the gnu public license. Yes, it is a little misleading to do something like this, but it is legal.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
Senior Member
No, it's not. When you do, you have to tell people what rights they have (you cannot take a GPL licensed project and strip the GPL from it.) Also, some of the stuff is not GPL; the game's artwork and music are not GPLed and forbidden to sell without permission.Originally Posted by williamthrilliam
Senior Member
Ignoring the Creative Commons licensed components for the moment, and playing devil's advocate, do you know that they aren't distributing the (potentially modified) source code on the CDROM with a copy of the GPL?
Junior Member
From the link I provided: "The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code. Those who do this are required by the GNU GPL to provide source code on subsequent request. "
And I did not know about the artwork that isn't GPL, and in that case would in fact infringe on someone else's IP. That doesn't change the fact though that selling GPL'd software is a-ok.
Senior Member
Also, I'm fairly sure a copy of the GPL license must be distributed with the software.
And even if it's not technically illegal, it's grossly dishonest, and something that Amazon shouldn't tolerate.
Linux Game Publishing
Oh, Butterfly Media's definitely being shifty...
For starters, you don't rip off content off of the websites and file the serial numbers off of the content (i.e. blurring out app titles, etc...) if you're trying to be on the up and up- so guys, do please quit trying to play "devils advocate" here...
Before you remark, I did verify what was claimed in the article and there's at least a lot of smoke from something smoldering there.
Phoronix Member
Selling
You guys all seem to be operating under the assumption that they're actually delivering a product. Did anyone try to buy one of them?
The "Photo Studio" page mentions Adobe all over it. Seems more like an outright scam where they're likely to not give you anything.
Linux Game Publishing
Ding! Give the man a ceeegaaaar!
Phoronix Test Suite
The details in the product section on Amazon clearly talks about flight gear, open source and GPL.
It looks like it is a zero-add fork of some of those applications. Permitted in general by the GPL. It's definitely not "nice", but that is secondary.
By choosing code under some of those licenses you give up the rights to control who and how in a lot of cases. Create Commons are similar. If you go for a permissive license with attribution, you may end up being associated with something you don't.
