5 ms·
You are misinformed, the GPL does not prevent you from selling your software. The GPL only requires that whoever you sell it to can do with it whatever they wan
by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
You are misinformed, the GPL does not prevent you from selling your software. The GPL only requires that whoever you sell it to can do with it whatever they want, more or less. That might limit some business models, but neither does it make GPL software useless for entrepreneurs nor does it prevent you from making money by selling software based on it.
- clarky07 11y agoActually it does. I'm primarily and iOS developer, and the GPL does prevent me from selling my software. Even if it weren't for Apple, the clones are bad enough without just having to give my code away to anyone who wants to use and sell the exact same app competing with me. FWIW, I would have no problem with something that forces open sourcing improvements to the open sourced software. What I don't like is not being able to use it as a tiny piece to a larger project without making the whole project GPL. That's the part that makes it not useful in many many cases.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y agoYou have it backwards, what is preventing you from selling your software is Apple, not the GPL. Also, you might want to think about what the fact that Apple's software on your customers' devices can prevent you from selling GPLed software to your customers has to do with the freedoms that the FSF is advocating for. And yeah, as I wrote, the GPL limits some business models, but that's a long way from "software that I can't sell". Locking in your customers is not an option, and that is essentially the whole point of Free Software, rather than missing the point, while being free of cost is not even a goal of RMS/the FSF.