[vorbis-dev] Vorbis license terms?

[Lynn Winebarger]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Alexandra Ellwood wrote:
> Frankly, this is why the GPL annoys me.  If you want to call your 
> source "free" then you shouldn't charge any money for it.  If Vorbis 
> charges for commercial licenses then who would want to contribute a 
> major feature enhancement to the source?  Why do unpaid work on a 
> free source project so that the owners can get paid for it?  The BSD 
> licenses (and to a lesser extent the LGPL) are the only licenses 
> which commit the author to writing source which is free to everyone. 
> Yes the BSD license allows you to make money off your free source, 
> but it also allows everyone else to do it too.
> 
   How many times does it need to be said, the "free" in free software is
about freedom and not price?
   There are a couple of reasons I can think of that someone may want to
contribute major feature enhancements back: (1) because they want a
company producing free software to make some money (this would also
require a guarantee anything contributed back was released under the GPL),
or (2) because they might work out a deal with some sort of payment for
the contribution.
   And, of course, they can always fork the project if they like.
   That said, I disagree with the notion that only proprietary software
vendors would make use of the code.  There's plenty of GPL'ed software
authors out there who would use the GPL'ed version.  

Lynn

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