Eric Fernandez wrote:
I totally agree with you.I want to make some precisions to what I wrote : by "commercial use" he seems to mean non-GPL software. Because he says that incorporating to a selling distribution is allowed freely. So by that definition it would be ok.
The first sentence shows " For all non-commercial use DansGuardian 2 can be downloaded under the GPL <http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html>"
This is a complete non-sense : the first part introduces a restriction, which is incompatible with the terms of the licence. It is exactly like Ford, who sold only black cars in the 20s for economy reasons, who said "You can choose the colour you want, if this colour is the black".
What he could have done, is restrict the download of binaries and source code, and comply to the GPL by giving the source only to people who buy the binaries. But he would loose the public help to enhance his code, because it would be more difficult to spread his code.
I do not understand how RMS could accept that. I guess he just put the fact that RMS has read that to have a kind of excuse...
Eric
However, I do not like that confusion with "commercial" and "proprietary" or "closed-source".
And the Mandrake page about "MNF" has the same problem.
What has to be emphasized is the fact that the GPL IS also a commercial licence. You may make money with it.
I know that for a lot of people that they quickly conclude that GPL means "free-beer" and non-commercial, and maybe using the word "commercial" is better in their MNF advertisement.
But I think it is disppointing that the Linux and GPL advocates like Mandrake contribute to that confusion.
Eric
