[PD] Re: [PD-dev] SourceForge "Donations"

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
marius schebella hat gesagt: // marius schebella wrote:

> what else should be free then??? why does not someone build a car for me???
> I appreciate your involvement in social ideas. and students and other needy
> people should always have free access to basic needs of their life like a
> bed, a place to live, food, public health system, education, (including
> computer education and software)... but i am talking about business people
> who earn their own money. yes, i think Pd should have a price.
>
> so please explain to me your decision to stop developing, if pd would cost
> money. do you think some people in the "Pd Mafia" would get rich at the
> expense of others??

Well, nothing is stopping you or anyone else to sell Pd CDs or provide
password-protected download areas for Pd and sell the passwords. This
is already possible with Pd's current license and with every open
source license as the GPL.  Enterprises like Redhat or Suse/Novell
earn quite a lot of money this way.  I just wonder who would buy your
Pd if its available "for free" (as in beer) on Miller's site, on
Sourceforge and so on, so you'd have to provide some added value like
ease of installation.

What I am talking about has been talked about almost to death since
the Free Software movement started decades ago: I don't want anyone to
restrict my rights of using, changing and giving away free software.
That's why I'm almost exclusivly using open source software. I "pay"
for this software in providing my software as Libre software myself,
in doing free support here and such. I even buy Debian CDs from time
to time.

My own coded contributions to Pd are licensed as GPL. You're free and
even encouraged to sell them (they already are sold on some Debian CDs
and maybe Suse, Mandrake,...,too), but you'd not be allowed to hold
back the rights and obligations I as primary author attached to my
sources: Provide source code, allow royalty-free redistribution, allow
changes, and put any changes you made under GPL again.

I know Pd has a different license, but if someone comes along and
restricts usage of Pd to those people who bought Pd, then yes: I would
be gone, and I'm sure lots of others would be gone, too. And if
someone would try to restrict usage of *my* GPL'd code to those who
pay him, then I would call my lawyer.

ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__