Recently in a meeting which happened on 14th of September, a very debatable topic came up. And that was GPL licensing!!
Being the member of the FOSS community, I knew some of the terms of GPL v2 like "FREE AS IN FREEDOM" and few more. But I was really boggled to see when one of the person who was in the meeting quoted that since these apps which we are submitting under #OpenDataApp Challenge, lie under GPL there won't be any money making involved in the whole of the process, as the source code is available to all. And this is where the topic of writing a blog post over myths regarding GPL came into my mind. As they say "HALF KNOWLEDGE IS A DANGEROUS THING" so I first did my homework reading some of the versions of the GPL.
ref URL : http://www.gnu.org/licenses/
After bit of googling I landed up in the FAQ section of the following website. And Voila!! there lay answers to all of my queries that were there in my mind. To quote a few, in which majority of "US" would be interested are as follows
Being the member of the FOSS community, I knew some of the terms of GPL v2 like "FREE AS IN FREEDOM" and few more. But I was really boggled to see when one of the person who was in the meeting quoted that since these apps which we are submitting under #OpenDataApp Challenge, lie under GPL there won't be any money making involved in the whole of the process, as the source code is available to all. And this is where the topic of writing a blog post over myths regarding GPL came into my mind. As they say "HALF KNOWLEDGE IS A DANGEROUS THING" so I first did my homework reading some of the versions of the GPL.
ref URL : http://www.gnu.org/licenses/
After bit of googling I landed up in the FAQ section of the following website. And Voila!! there lay answers to all of my queries that were there in my mind. To quote a few, in which majority of "US" would be interested are as follows
- Q. If I distribute GPL'd software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge? (#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic)
- Ans : No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public.
- Q. I want to get credit for my work. I want people to know what I wrote. Can I still get credit if I use the GPL? (#IWantCredit)
-
You can certainly get credit for the work. Part of releasing a
program under the GPL is writing a copyright notice in your own name
(assuming you are the copyright holder). The GPL requires all copies
to carry an appropriate copyright notice.
Q.I would like to release a program I wrote under the GNU GPL, but I would like to use the same code in non-free programs. (#ReleaseUnderGPLAndNF)
To release a non-free program is always ethically tainted, but legally there is no obstacle to your doing this. If you are the copyright holder for the code, you can release it under various different non-exclusive licenses at various times.
As you can see, it is thus a myth that binds most of the MICROSOFT MOLE (as I may term them, people who don't have sufficient knowledge how open source community works and it's product development schema) out here it's for you that YES you can make MONEY with GPL licensed SOFTWARE!
Well I'll restrict myself to this only, as I have plenty of other projects pending. Do give your suggestions, criticism, comments, over this post. Till the next time adios!
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