@ilkkachu I don't know. So some people actually sold patches to the Linux kernel? And those patches were never distributed? And if I want to get my hands on those patches, I need to pay someone?
Honestly, I never imagined a scenario involving patches. I just imagined like a standalone software program.
@terdon I did indeed. I'm still not seeing what your difficulty is. So, if you want to sell your GPLd software to someone, and they are willing to pay you money for it, that's all fine. Nothing to stop you. But you have to find someone who is willing to pay. The point is that in the real world, the price of something that can be freely distributed and has no marginal cost fairly fairly quickly to zero if it wasn't already at zero in the first place.
With the possible exception of some Linux patches.
Of course, if there is marginal cost, it's a slightly different situation.
Back in the day, Stallman and possibly other people used to sell "tapes" with GNU software on them. Starting with GNU Emacs, I think.
And more recently you could buy boxed sets of CDs with Linux distributions on them.
In 199 I purchased RH 5.2 (I think) for like USD 30. And in 1999, aSuSE 6.4 boxed set for USD 40, give or take. Exciting times.
That was at a time when downloading an entire Linux distribution wasn't practical. And also CD burners weren't as easily available as they are today.
I can't remember whether one could install RH and SuSE over the net at that time or not.
@FaheemMitha OK. To me, "X follows from Y" suggests that you feel that if Y, then X. So I took your statement to mean that "If software is Free like speech, then it is also free like beer".
@terdon Well, in practical terms it is the case. It isn't the case that the actual statement "this software is available gratis" is part of the rules of free software.
That isn't part of free software, and never could be.
There are lots of thing people think they would like to add to the rules, but mostly they don't work. Like - I won't allow my software to be used by the US military to murder brown people in faraway places. That would be nice. But no, you can't do that.
@terdon Um, no. Accident, sorry.
How do I unpin?
Or maybe it was someone else?
I don't recall clicking over on the right, though I might have.
@FaheemMitha you clicked the star. I mean the context menu, opened up from a small black downward-pointing triangle at the end of each message on the starboard
@jesse_b And/or the recoil matters less if you hold the gun properly. Like with two hands and the stock on your shoulder. Unlike that dude is doing... Also, if that's a pump action, all the more reason to use two hands, I imagine.
@ilkkachu yeah shotguns generally have more recoil but for all I know it's a 20 gauge which would make it almost non existent. Also some pump action shotguns have a recoil spring
(and I'm also really happy I've known you long enough to know I don't need to add a disclaimer to that, but if anyone else reads it... don't, ya tool!)
@FaheemMitha or "sell", present tense. If you look at the download page (I thought I linked exactly that before), the latest one is dated yesterday. And no, I haven't seen them in the wild (but I haven't looked that closely), and yes, I imagine you need to pay, that's what the web site seems to imply with words like "Purchase" and "Subscription".
Also, given that they went closed some time back (was it 2017? I checked earlier but forgot already), and the site is still up, I suppose they have clients.
and, well, I wouldn't be exactly surprised if there were other companies that sold GPL'd software or some product that included GPL'd software to business customers, all with providing source code etc., and we never heard about it.
stackoverflow.com/teams i am again asked about cookies and presented with a confusing term like technologist. And the banks stopped awarding me credit cards anyway, which is an outrage in itself really, i am still an outstanding credit to humanity therefore deserving of further magic money cards
@AndrasDeak now that I actually read the whole piece, the comments also have some rather sane discussion on the legality of that all, with Red Hat mentioned too. (sane until about May 11, at least)
yeeah... I've read their comments on LWN in earlier times, and, well... the least bad thing I can say is that one about there being two sorts of intelligence: social and technical. And they don't always meet in a single person.
@ilkkachu quite frankly I'm guarding against even more comments arguing what I feel are completely irrelevant minutiae about absurd scenarios of attack. Since people keep commenting, I am adding stuff to appease them in the hope that I can stop receiving notifications. I now delete the tmp file which I had forgotten.
