I don't know the proper rules and all, but I didn't think it was legal to sell something that was Open Source or GPL as what VDR is? I don't know how all of the authors of all the VDR Plugins and Klaus himself feel about others making money off of their hard work, and I hate to see things change. But thought people should be aware there are a couple of people out there trying to make money off of your work. Someone is selling a VDR Live CD, there is a thread about it on dvbn.happysat.org Just wanted to let you guys know. I hope that a stop is put to that, cuz I think that is just wrong.
Thanks to all that help make this software what it is.
DVB WannaB wrote:
I don't know the proper rules and all, but I didn't think it was legal to sell something that was Open Source or GPL as what VDR is? I don't know how all of the authors of all the VDR Plugins and Klaus himself feel about others making money off of their hard work, and I hate to see things change. But thought people should be aware there are a couple of people out there trying to make money off of your work. Someone is selling a VDR Live CD, there is a thread about it on dvbn.happysat.org http://dvbn.happysat.org Just wanted to let you guys know. I hope that a stop is put to that, cuz I think that is just wrong.
Thanks to all that help make this software what it is.
The GPL allows that.
The only obstacle imposed by the GPL is that you have to provide the source of the Software. When the source is included everything is fine.
Otherwise the 'vendor' has to provide the source on request. Only if the 'vendor' doesn't provide the source they are in legal violation.
So selling GPL-software is perfectly fine as long as you play be the rules.
If someone doesn't want their GPL-software sold, they have choosen the wrong license. The GPL doesn't allow restriction of selling the software for profit. You have to use another license if you don't want you software to be sold for profit or want to be asked beforehand.
But IANAL. This is the digest from several 'license-flamewars' on the Linux kernel-maillinglist. :-)
Thanks for the explanation, and not trying to start a license flaming war, it just bothered me more than anything that someone is making a buck off of everyone else's hard work. But I guess if it is legal, what can you do. If people are stupid enough to buy it, then I guess it is on them.
Thanks again.
On 1/31/06, Matthias Schniedermeyer ms@citd.de wrote:
DVB WannaB wrote:
I don't know the proper rules and all, but I didn't think it was legal to sell something that was Open Source or GPL as what VDR is? I don't know how all of the authors of all the VDR Plugins and Klaus himself feel about others making money off of their hard work, and I hate to see things change. But thought people should be aware there are a couple of people out there trying to make money off of your work. Someone is selling a VDR Live CD, there is a thread about it on dvbn.happysat.org http://dvbn.happysat.org Just wanted to let you guys know. I hope that a stop is put to that, cuz I think that is just wrong.
Thanks to all that help make this software what it is.
The GPL allows that.
The only obstacle imposed by the GPL is that you have to provide the source of the Software. When the source is included everything is fine.
Otherwise the 'vendor' has to provide the source on request. Only if the 'vendor' doesn't provide the source they are in legal violation.
So selling GPL-software is perfectly fine as long as you play be the rules.
If someone doesn't want their GPL-software sold, they have choosen the wrong license. The GPL doesn't allow restriction of selling the software for profit. You have to use another license if you don't want you software to be sold for profit or want to be asked beforehand.
But IANAL. This is the digest from several 'license-flamewars' on the Linux kernel-maillinglist. :-)
-- Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous.
vdr mailing list vdr@linuxtv.org http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr
On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 09:18:37 -0600 DVB WannaB dvbwannab@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for the explanation, and not trying to start a license flaming war, it just bothered me more than anything that someone is making a buck off of everyone else's hard work. But I guess if it is legal, what can you do. If people are stupid enough to buy it, then I guess it is on them.
Thanks again.
Don't be bothered. Think about all the Linux distributions for example. There wouldn't be SUSE, Redhat, Mandrake, etc. if the Linux kernel wasn't licensed the way it is. It is also quite likely Linux wouldn't be where it is today without the commercial distributions, so there you go. In case of VDR there is also a good chance that people who package it and sell it, make the software much more known than it would otherwise be. Even better if the packagers provide full support for the software too. I can't speak for the VDR developers, but personally I would find that quite desirable.
On the other hand, if the people packaging VDR would claim that it is completely their own work and didn't provide the source code, that would be disrespectful and annoying.
-- Niko Mikkilä
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DVB WannaB -
Matthias Schniedermeyer -
Niko Mikkila