> Kermit is commercial software, requiring payment to Columbia in order to
> sell it. Any distribution that does include it without paying is
> breaking the law.
You mean, any distribution that involves a payment, right? If payment is
only required in order to sell it, that implies that it can be distributed
freely if no payment is involved, right? E.g., distributed freely on the
net?
> The Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public License is only free to the
> non-commercial sector of the public. "public", according to my
> Merriam-Webster dictionary is "affecting all the people or the whole
> area of a nation or state". Whoops.
The AGFPL allows free *use* by anyone. It allows free *distribution* by
anyone as long as no payment is required to receive the distribution (and
there's even a specific exemption from that for certain CD-ROMs, which is
where this discussion started). It does not distinguish between "sectors"
or classes of *people*, only between *actions* taken by people. For
example, I know that Intel distributes Aladdin Ghostscript (free) on a BBS
they operate.
Probably this isn't the place to get into a discussion of the relative
merits of the GNU and Aladdin licenses. If I make it to the free software
conference in Boston in February, I hope to stir up some lively discussion
on this topic.
--lpd
