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> I'm not 100% sure that FOSS means free as in beer. It doesn't. The only requirements for licenses like GPL, etc. is that anyone who you distribute a binary t
by the_pwner224 8y ago
> I'm not 100% sure that FOSS means free as in beer.
It doesn't. The only requirements for licenses like GPL, etc. is that anyone who you distribute a binary to can ask you for the source code, and you must provide it for a reasonable fee (for GPL it's "for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source", and you must provide the source on request for as long as you offer support for the binary blob, with a minimum of three years).
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
Can't find it now, but I recall finding a link here (by the developer(s) of curl iirc) about how his BMW had a screen with the free software credits and BMW sent him a CD with the source when he requested it.
Edit: couldn't find that BMW article, but here are a few interesting links related to that:
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/08/12/a-hundred-million-cars-run-curl/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/08/12/a-hundred-million-car...
(multiple BMW screenshots in this page) https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/10/03/screenshotted-curl-credits/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/10/03/screenshotted-curl-cr...
- dfox 8y agoThe ability to somehow acquire the source is one of the requirements, but from the making money PoV it is not that significant. What is significant for this discussion is that another GPL requirement is that whoever you distribute software to is permitted to redistribute however they see fit.