On Tue, 2002-12-17 at 15:15, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 02:01:03PM +0000, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
Software released under the GNU GPL already allows you to build and redistribute a derivative product with a well known commercial license: the GNU GPL
Yes, can you send them a polite email pointing this out?
Hi,
I sent them the following message. I hope that was polite :)
Hello,
I am a Systems Administrator of a banking entity in Portugal, so I felt somewhat curious about MandrakeSecurity Multi Network Firewall, specially since it came from an european company that distributes GNU/Linux.
I learned about MNF through the news on its terms of use (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/mnf/license). As I read them, I saw an unfourtunatly misleading phrase: <<The Commercial License Agreement provides (...) the possibility to build and redistribute a derivative product with commercial licensing.>>
Reading further, I reached the conclusion that that must've been an unfourtunately common confusion between proprietary and commercial.
After all, Mandrake is a commercial distribution of GNU/Linux, as well as SuSE and RedHat to name two more, and I can build and redistribute derivative products based on them, commercially.
Software released under the GNU GPL allows you to build and redistribute derivatives commercially!
Commercial software that is Free Software (Logiciel Libres) is a very important contribution that should be encouraged to exist. It helps paying for the development of more Free Software, for instance.
Therefore, please don't use the world commercial when you mean proprietary software, since that perpetuates the incorrect idea that Free Software is not commercial.
I hope that you will forgive me for writing such a long message, and also that you may correct that information as soons as it is possible
Best regards,
Rui