Comment by hjek
9 years ago
"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible-just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.
Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on."
You can't practically charge for distribution though - your sell it to one person, and they'll upload it to an FTP archive server.
Sure---that's sharing with your friends and neighbors, and that's a fundamental freedom.
But many/most will follow the project directly. You can offer the source code to build yourself , or provide a convenient binary/installer for those who either don't want to or can't (for example).
This is especially prevalent for mobile OS's, where building is an unfamiliar task or PITA for many, even hackers.
Would I personally? No. But I respect that decision.
Your inability to figure out a competent business model that also respects the rights of users is not the user's problem. You have no right to lock someone's computer down, to prevent them from using the copy of the software that you sold them, and the only way to guarantee that is to require the source to be open.
Look, it probably won't matter anyway. Probably nobody is going to use your software.
The same is true of literally every piece of software ever distributed regardless of license.
False. Because then you can sue that person for the damages incurred by their violation of the license.