On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 02:14:10PM -0800, Brian Redfern wrote: > he's only charging > $9, so its potentially arguable that he's just charging for the labor to > burn a cd for someone Completely irrelevant. If he includes the GPL and his source code he could charge $200 and if sombody's fool enough to pay for it that's legal under the GPL as I understand it. The GPL does *not* have any stuff about "reasonable copying costs" etc. like those old DOS shareware licences did. If the source and GPL are included, that sets a practical limit on how much he can get away with charging because anyone else can get a copy and undercut him in the same market. > but what's more problematic is how he tries to > re-brand One legal nightmare I can envisage is trademarking his name for the product. I'm not sure if the GPL says anything about that... If Luxuriousity Office gets a name for itself, Open Office might be perceived as a derivative "clone". (Actually it says "Open Office" all over his web site at the moment) > or attempts to make it look like his company has written the > software Doesn't seem so from the web site: " Today, programmers from around the world collaborate on the project and it has made this program one of the most popular audio editing programs in history." " Luxuriousity is pleased to be a community distributor for this program and can offer it to you for a price that barely covers the manufacturing costs and the limited support. The team of developers currently working on this program have asked Luxuriousity to have our customers pass on their ideas on how this program can be enhanced"... They may or may not have done that, of course... -- Anahata anahata@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827
