[Ardour-Users] Could this solve Ardour's financial headache?

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 11:39 AM, John Emmas <johne53 at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "moron" <moron at industrial.org>
> To: <ardour-users at lists.ardour.org>
> Sent: 08 January 2009 19:05
> Subject: Re: [Ardour-Users] Could this solve Ardour's financial headache?
>>
>> Howdy.  The GPL requires that if you use other GPL source and you
>> distribute the results, your source must be made freely available.  You
>> can charge a *small* fee for stuff like a CD containing the source but it
>> still must be made available.
>>
>> If you are going to distribute via private SVN wouldn't Ardour have to be
>> entirely clean of any GPL source (and then presumably dual licensed)?
>>
> A small fee is really all we're talking about but let's be clear about the
> originator's obligations.
>
> If somebody distributes a binary program that uses GPL code, the license
> obligates that person (let's call him "the originator") to distribute the
> source code at the same time as the binary or (alternatively) to provide a
> notice stating how and where the source code can be obtained.  It DOES NOT
> obligate the originator to distribute future changes to the code until the
> next time he distributes a corresponding binary build.
>
> If the originator decides to make interim changes available - without
> accompanying binaries - there's nothing in the agreement (as far as I can
> see) to stop him from making a charge for providing that service.  Therefore
> (according to my interpretation of the GPL) an originator can charge for SVN
> access to his code without being in breach of the agreement.
>
> John

And again, if the originator wants to charge for access to SVN then he
can do that irrespective of whether he provides the binary or not.

However, again, Better together... (tm) This all works to divide the community.

Maybe something more like the community picking out a specific
hardware vendor and trying to get them to do something that would
package Ardour and provide some income that way.

- Mark