> Do you pay Linus Thorwalds for every one of > your kernel? Yes, indirectly. He is paid by OSDL to work on the kernel, so every time you buy a product from a member of the OSDL consortium you are doing exactly that. > the GPL does not put any > (monetary) restrictions on the distribution of the kernel. Sure, but a kernel by itself isn't much use to most people, which is why only complete systems (or distributions as we've come to call them) are commercially viable. > Yes, you may charge, but no, you're not obliged to. That's the case with any transaction. In the context of musicians, I envisage that (since the majority never make a decent living from their music) most would use a libre music system if it meant that their music was heard and appreciated by more people. Removing money from the transaction would probably benefit most musicians - ok, they'd still have to fund production by themselves, but they wouldn't have to spend thousands of euros or dollars on promotion, for example sending CD's to record labels, radio stations and music journalists that would probably drop most of them straight in the rubbish bin. The way the music business is structured at the moment, promotion for an up-and-coming band probably costs far more then album production. As paradoxical as it may seem, you need to pay for a video to get on mainstream radio in the UK now, and there are also 'buy-ons', where bands pay for the privilege of touring with more established artists. Then there's the cost of arranging publicity, and playing for free when everyone else still has to be paid. But what about that minority of musicians who do have a commercial hit? We need to build safeguards into libre music licensing for them, just as RMS built safeguards into the GPL against the exploiters who were moving in on his world. Otherwise, we might as well put everything - software and music - into the public domain, and trust that unfettered human nature will produce the right result. Cheers Daniel
