amitst
November 9th, 2007, 10:03 AM
I have just gone through the four freedom laws of software on www.gnu.org.
I have a query regarding the third law (freedom level 2). It says that if I sell a free software to a person, then that person is eligible to give away the (modified or original) copies of that software for free or for a price,
Doesn't the above law has an issue? If a person is putting efforts to build a program then shouldn't (s)he have right to distribute it? In presence of the above law, I can image that the person will earn money by selling only a single copy of his program and rest of the world will get the copies for free (from the person who has bought the program).
So isn't that injustice for the person who has put a lot of effort to build the program? Shouldn't (s)he be rewarded for it?
Of course I can't think of an alternate law so that the person is also rewarded and others also get the right to modify and sell/distribute the modified program.
:confused:
I have a query regarding the third law (freedom level 2). It says that if I sell a free software to a person, then that person is eligible to give away the (modified or original) copies of that software for free or for a price,
Doesn't the above law has an issue? If a person is putting efforts to build a program then shouldn't (s)he have right to distribute it? In presence of the above law, I can image that the person will earn money by selling only a single copy of his program and rest of the world will get the copies for free (from the person who has bought the program).
So isn't that injustice for the person who has put a lot of effort to build the program? Shouldn't (s)he be rewarded for it?
Of course I can't think of an alternate law so that the person is also rewarded and others also get the right to modify and sell/distribute the modified program.
:confused: