Why the distinction between free software and GPL software is important

[Luke Knowles]

You really should use the word _freeware_ instead of Free Software because
Free (as in freedom) software is really anything covered by the GPL,
GPL-compatible licences and licenses that are deemed so by the Free Software
Foundation.

Just to clarify Mark meant free as in no-cost NOT Free as in freedom

See the below to learn about the differences between Free and freeware.
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.gnu.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware

I don't want to cause any troubles, I just wanted to clear this up.

Cheers,
Luke Knowles

On 4/26/07, Mark Wallace <newburghmark at aol.com> wrote:
>
> The reason why the distinction between free and GPL software is
> important is someone could get into a lot of trouble is they took
> Reader and  used it as a basis to reverse engineer a product that
> would compete with the Acrobat full suite.  He would be free to do
> that with XPDF, and could turn around and make what he did
> proprietary, as long as he made the original xpdf available for free.
>
> A software writer would want to GPL it so that the larger community
> would help him develop it.  That's how we got Open Office.  Sun
> Microsystems could see that it didn't have the resources to make Star
> Office competitive with Microsoft Word, so they went GPL.  They
> actually bought the product from a small company in Germany long ago
>
> The same is true for Netscape.  Ten years ago, they were selling it
> in a box at Target.  They could see that they were losing ground with
> Explorer, a product that came pre-installed with Windows for free, so
> they went open source so that the geeks in the world would make
> improvements in it.  The last version of Netscape still wasn't GPL,
> it was free.   But the GPL product was virtually identical.
>
> The same is true for Star Office today.  You can pay $35 for it in a
> store.  Why, I don't know, but some people aren't really price
> conscious.  I had a car salesman tell me that he has people who get
> through the whole process of buying a new car without price ever
> coming up.   They are totally focused on the features.
>
> Robert Mark Wallace
> Tita P Walllace
> Regina E P Wallace
> R M Ceferino P Wallace
> 60 Delaware Road
> Newburgh, NY 12550-3802
> Telephone: (845) 566-0586
>
>
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-- 
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the
wise forgive but do not forget." - Thomas S. Szasz
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