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GPL Sued For "Software Price Fixing"

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Refalm:
Aren't you supposed to decide your own price of your GPL software?

What is this price fixing about then?

piratePenguin:

--- Quote from: Refalm ---Aren't you supposed to decide your own price of your GPL software?

What is this price fixing about then?
--- End quote ---
That's what I always thought.
RMS always said it's OK to sell free software (heh), but is the problem that FSF releases free software, defeating competition, and then there's (always) the (impossible) possibility of them starting to charge for the software and setup a monopaly?
FSF would do no such thing!
But anyhow, is that what the suit is about? 'cause
/me doesn't have a clue

mobrien_12:

--- Quote from: piratePenguin ---That's what I always thought.
but is the problem that FSF releases free software, defeating competition, and then there's (always) the (impossible) possibility of them starting to charge for the software and setup a monopaly?

--- End quote ---


FSF releases free software, but under the GPL.  This means that each and every recipient of GPL software, including you and me, receives the right to modify and redistribute that software, so long as it is redistributed under the GPL.  

Say someone releases software under the GPL, millions of people start to use it, then he/she decides to stop releasing it under the GPL and sells a new version under a proprietary licence.  Well, you and I and everyone else still has the source code to the old version and STILL have the rights to distribute and modify it.  No monopoly possible there.  

And if you write the software,  you can release it under as many different licences as you want.  Trolltech releases Qt as GPL and also sells non-GPL licences to people who want to use Qt for closed-source projects.

mobrien_12:
There is a good discussion of this at Groklaw.

Anyway, the whole lawsuit is crap.  The GPL doesn't fix prices.  You can charge whatever you want for GPL software.  The only restriction is that every recipient of GPL software has the right to copy, modify, and redistribute the software under the GPL.  The GPL is really about freedom to distrubite and modify, not free of charge.

And nobody prevents you from writing proprietary software with superior features to open source stuff.  Plenty of people are making money with proprietary software.

Annorax:
@the lawyers:

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