Someone just directed me to the following ebay vendor selling FlightGear.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Realistic-Professional-Aviation-Flight-Simulator_W0QQitemZ260053619883QQihZ016QQcategoryZ80336QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
At first glance I thought, no big deal, just another person selling a
distribution of FlightGear. But wait a second: this person is selling it as
a "digital download". So they are charging people money for the right to
download flightgear, when they could just as easily (well a lot more easily)
download it for free.
The more I think about it, the more I have a problem with this. If they
were selling FlightGear on CD, or on floppies, or on reels of tape, or punch
cards, or even printed versions of the source code, I would have absolutely
no problem. That is specifically allowed for in the GPL, and the vendor can
set whatever price they want.
But here they are not selling anything. Can we call what they are selling a
distribution? The rights to download something that is already available
for free download?
So my questions:
1. Am I right to be concerned about this?
2. Is there any outright GPL violation going on here?
3. If there is a GPL violation, how should we go about addressing it (and
legitimate, legal methods only please.)
Thanks,
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson - University of Minnesota - FlightGear Project
http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/ http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
http://www.flightgear.org
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