[savramescu]

Actually no. He is making a statement exactly on pricing. You've got the liberty not to buy it. But he's asking ALL software developers to stop making software for money. How is that freedom? "So if they stop making it – that would be great!"

[skore]

No, that's not what he was saying at all. He said people should stop making proprietary software. Whether or not a software is free as in freedom or proprietary has nothing to do with price.

[jiggy2011]

Right, the pricing is more an implementation details of the licensing but of course in the real world(tm) it is an important one.

[burgerbrain]

You do realize that people sell GPL'd software all the time, right?

[vertex-four]

No, the ones that employ more than one or two people and make decent amounts of money sell services related to GPLed software. (In a world where everyone had proper Internet connections, we wouldn't have companies selling GPL software on physical media at all.) This probably isn't profitable in many cases, especially when distributing directly to the consumer rather than building a product for other business.

There is another special case, but it's selling software in spite of the GPL; home routers, set top boxes, etc. Were they to use GPLv3 software, they'd have no way to protect against another company using their (potentially substantial) work on the software, building/copying the hardware design and creating cheap knock-offs within a few weeks of release, making it too costly to continue.

If a group of companies and individuals wanted to come together to build a new router platform where all would contribute back to it, but they could differentiate themselves on edge features, management interfaces, etc, the BSD license is good enough; and probably a better bet than the GPL.

[burgerbrain]

And the practical differences are?

[jiggy2011]

I think he just described some.

There seems to be a phenomenon on HN of hardcore anti-copyright or pro-piracy posters who reply antagonistically to posts that they appear to have either deliberately misread or not read at all.

[jiggy2011]

Can you name a company (or a part of a company that is a profit center, or even an indie developer). That makes it's money primarily from selling GPL software?

Software that used to be sold commercially but was subsequently GPL'd , starving artist type programmers scraping by on donations (i.e earning significantly less than the median programmer salary for someone of their skills) or companies that produce GPL software but make money selling either support or software/hardware based around their GPL software (that itself is not GPL) don't count.

[bmelton]

Why wouldn't they count?

Companies that sell software generally have services divisions as well. My company sells software for large amounts of money, and we have a separate division of the company that sells services.

If a company exists to make money, why would you discount one of their profit centers as invalid because of another of their profit centers?

[jiggy2011]

Many software companies don't have service divisions, or have a service division that consists of people answering the phone and providing basic "talk you through the installation" type support.

I assume that the software your company sells for large amounts of money is not GPL , if it is pure GPL I would be very interested to know who they are and how they manage to get people to actually pay for it when they could just download it for free online.

If a company exists to make money, why would you discount one of their profit centers as invalid because of another of their profit centers?

That's not what I'm saying, what I'm saying is that I've never seen a company create GPL software as a profit center in itself and I really can't think of a business plan that would make that feasible.

[burgerbrain]

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3500373

"don't count"

Says you.

[jiggy2011]

They don't count because they are not selling software. They are selling something else and the software is essentially a byproduct.

This means that there are categories of software where GPL does not really fit at all, games for example.

[icebraining]

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html