Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul 26, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Your wording is too ambiguous and you associate unusual politics with
> some of those words so I have no idea what you intend.

Tell me which words, and I'll point out they're present in the GPL as
well, and you don't seem to have any trouble (mis)interpreting it.

>> - I charge the first customer, that hired the software development,
>> a fair price for the work I did.

> Put yourself on the other side of that fence.  Would you be that first
> customer for something no single person could afford?

If I need it badly enough, sure?  If I believe I can recover a fair
portion of those costs, sure?

>> - This customer is entitled to further distribute it or sell it, since
>> it's Free Software.

> Yet, the first recipient can also sell it at a lower cost - or give it
> away.

Why should I care?  Remember, I've already been paid by my work.  If
they do, good for them!

>> - I help the customer set up a plan to recover some of the investment:
>> I commit to not publishing the software before a certain date,
>> except to customers who join an "early access group", and we invite
>> others to join this group for a fee that shrinks as more customers
>> join.  The fee is split over all previously-joining customers.  None
>> of them are under any obligation to not distribute the software any
>> further.
>> 
>> - Once they reach a goal number or a date, I make the software
>> available to everyone.

> Why? Long before that the early recipients will have made it
> available.

If they do, per your argument, they'd be losing the ability to recover
part of their costs.  Why would they?

> to make the point clear, let's assume that this work would be
> intuitive to use and have no flaws so there is no potential revenue
> beyond an initial sale.

Because in some strange world, that's how the majority of software is?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}