Hi Jeff,
Here's what I think about this subject.
Being open source software doesn't say a thing about the possibility
of charging for it. That kind of thing is ruled by the license
agreement. (The same procedure as for proprietary software.) As far
as I know, Sword's license is "GPL" with some libraries in "Lesser
GPL". These licenses are designed to allow you to do whatever you
want, except transforming open source projects into proprietary
software. So you always have to provide the source code and allow
everyone the same license you were given. You can charge for it, if
you want. Many companies charge for Linux, for instance, of for
OpenOffice. This is legal.
That being said, I think that company may be crossing the line anyway
because some of the modules used for sword have special licenses due
to the authorization given by copyright holder that restricts the use
of those libraries to the sword project and forbids anyone from
charging for those libraries. If they are doing so, then crosswire
should contact them and ask them to remove such libraries from their
CDs. If some of the companies that are allowing the use of their work
comes to the knowledge of this practice, they may require the removal
of the libraries from crosswire too. And this would be a huge problem.
Greetings,
Jónatas
Em 2006/05/27, às 05:38, Jeff Needle escreveu:
Sword is open source software. Theoretically you can't charge for it.
I got hoodwinked with a software company called Think Well (they're
on the web). They offer 4 cd's for the cost of shipping. Buried
in the end user agreement, as far out of sight as they can make it,
they indicate that only two of the CD's are really free. If you
don't return the other two in 30 days, they ding you twenty five
bucks for each CD!
One of the CD's was Sword. In effect, these guys are selling Sword
for twenty five bucks. They're doing the same thing with Open Office.
Isn't this against the rules? Can something be done to stop them?
Thanks.
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