[amsat-bb] Re: Selling "free" software.

[Tony Langdon]

At 06:00 AM 12/2/2008, Clint Bradford wrote:
>You can contact eBay security and open a case with them for copyright
>infringement and/or the use of your images and text without your
>permission. eBay took my case last month very seriously, and it was
>resolved in less than three days.

I've been reading this thread for the past day or so and have a 
couple of questions and comments.  First, the comments.  In a lot of 
open source licenses, there is no prohibition on selling the 
software.  Even the GPL does not prohibit selling the software, 
provided that the conditions of the license are met.

Selling free software does have some merit, such as when the buyer 
wants it distributed on media (CD-ROM, etc), and the seller wants to 
recover the cost of the media.

Where I see problems is if the seller claims the software is "theirs" 
(either explicitly or implicitly by removing copyright notices), or 
they don't follow the conditions of the license (e.g. distributing 
only binaries of a GPL licensed application).

So, is the seller really doing something seriously wrong?  Or are 
they merely charging to distribute free software on media?

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