On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 13:44, Richard Stallman wrote:
> So If I spend $X developing my game and then sell it closed with the
> stated intention of opening the source as soon as it has recouped a
> reasonable return on my investment, this would get your official seal of
> approval?
>
> Not quite. We can't count on this to result in free software.
>
> 2. There's no time limit. "As soon as it has recouped a reasonable
> return" could mean years from now, or never. As a result, even if you
> specify a specific free software license that you will use, we still
> can't count on this to make the package free software in any
> reasonable time.
So if he specifies a specific future license (eg GPL, just to simplify
things) and indicates what 'reasonable return' is (eg "a sale of 8,000
licenses" or some such) that would be ok......
> If these two points were suitably changed, this becomes a plan that I
> might recommend to you if you were otherwise going to keep the
> software non-free and there were no better possibility. However, I
> could not recommend actually using the software while it is non-free.
....but you'd recommend that people not have the freedom to make their
own price/value decisions AND (added bonus) actively work to PREVENT it
ever becoming GPL'd.
User: "This [game/driver/database/...] is exactly what I need, and its
only $50! Its worth way more than that to me, this rules."
RMS: "Sorry, you're not allowed to buy that. Just wait until it becomes
free, then its all yours."
User: "Um.. ok. I need it pretty soon, and $50 is a great deal; it would
cost me at least $2k and time I don't have to recreate it from scratch.
When will it be free so I can use it?"
RMS: "Well... when a bunch of people piss me off and go buy it."
....
Heh. Hehehehe. So we're back to the "software developers are evil and
should all starve to death" stance. Nifty. Thank [insert diety here]
that you are working so hard to destroy your reputation; I'd hate to see
the number of people following your edicts actually increasing..
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 07 2003 - 22:00:36 EST