Re: Video recording of LilyPond talk at Chemnitz

[David Kastrup]

Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 9:37 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Jeff Barnes <address@hidden> writes:
>>> Just curious. If there wasn't a free as in beer version of a GPL
>>> software package, wouldn't one logically expect a fork? How does GNU
>>> address that?
>>
>> You can't fork what has not been written yet.
>
> I suppose the situation might be as follows: source code is freely
> available (on website, github or whatever), but the binaries are not.
> Anyone tech-savvy enough to serve himself doesn't have to pay, but
> "simple users" do have.  I think that if the price was low (say, 5$)
> nobody might be interested in forking it.

Personally, I do not like this "milk the less computer-savvy people"
approach.  Ardour does some things that way IIRC.  I have done quite a
bit of GPLed contract work (and it was me who spelled out the release
under GPL and who was responsible for release into the public): people
pay to get a particular job done.  And not every job consists of
licensing software: some people actually need to _use_ it.  If nobody
does the job, it does not get done, simple as that.  And if it gets
released under the GPL, they have a chance of finding other contractors
and/or having some community maintenance happen for free.

-- 
David Kastrup