Le 22/12/2014 12:56, Dave Liquorice a écrit : > > IMHO if they are not putting anything back into SME be that via bug fixes, > development, NFRs or financially they are effectively stealing the code and > efforts of others.
No no no, and triple no !! ;-) We release SME as free (libre) software, which includes several freedom to the user, including using it without any counter part. If *we* give something to someone, how could we possibly blame him to "steal" our work, that makes no sense. > Doesn't the licence have "non-commercial use only" > clause(s)? No, that wouldn't be free software anymore, only freeware I don't have the magic solution to increase incomes, but I just think we have to be careful with this kind of thing. I have no problem with people making money out of free software (my own company does this) so I'm clearly not against some commercial/professional side, but making it mandatory to pay to use it have some serious issue: - Privacy issue, as we require every one to create an account somewhere - Technical issue: how do we enforce users are paying each year ? - Legal issue: we can charge for downloading the ISO, but requiring a recurrent fee seems border line to me with respect to the GPL (we could get around it by cutting access to updates for account which haven't paid though I guess) But, doing so will probably reduce our user base. I for sure wouldn't even bother to try an OS with such limitations. In fact, even a registration being required to download the ISO is a deal breaker for me ++ -- Daniel Berteaud FIREWALL-SERVICES SARL. Société de Services en Logiciels Libres Technopôle Montesquieu 33650 MARTILLAC Tel : 05 56 64 15 32 Fax : 05 56 64 15 32 Visio: https://vroom.im/dani Web : http://www.firewall-services.com _______________________________________________ Discussion about project organisation and overall direction To unsubscribe, e-mail [email protected] Searchable archive at http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/public/discussion/
