Bruce Perens via Dng said on Tue, 2 Sep 2025 16:16:00 -0700

>Anyone who feels that the GPL is a barrier to their selling their own
>software, etc. needs to first explain MySQL, Artifex, Alladin
>Enterprises, and for that matter, Red Hat and its ilk.

Red Hat won't distribute their *branded* OS without insisting on
payment for support. So what they're selling is support, not their OS.
Until recently Centos sold what amounted to a copy of Red Hat Linux,
but something changed.

I sell books. Let's say I used the GPL 2 or GPL 3 license on my books.
I sell the first book for whatever amount I can get. After that, the
person who bought it sells copies for half my price, the people who buy
it from him sell it for half his price, until finally people figure
there's no money to be made so they give it away.

Your specific question was to explain how these GPL'ed things get sold.
Another factor is trademarks, which isn't covered by the GPL2 (and
probably most of the others). MySQL is a trademark of Oracle. Red Hat
holds a trademark on "Red Hat". Artifex is a trademark of Artifex
Software, Inc. Alladin is a registered trademark of BlackRock, Inc.

If I want to sell copies of their software, I cannot use their names,
and probably anything suggestive of their names, and the closer I get
to their names, the more likely I get sued by a pretty big entity.

I suppose I could start selling Alladin software (the part that's
GPL'ed) as Assetuouis, but it's a pretty hard marketing climb to
popularize under that name. And Alladin is under no obligation to
provide service for Assetuouis software. So in that respect you're
right: With the right trademark, the right well funded marketing, well
publicized over time, you can make money selling GPL'ed software.

But if you want to be a Brown Deer Wisconsin lone developer selling a
compression utility dirt cheap (like two dollars), GPL'ing it will be
the kiss of death for your intended business.

And yeah, I know you probably won't make a go of it at two bucks an
installation, even if it's a proprietary license and nobody does
unauthorized copying. It was just an example.

SteveT

Steve Litt

http://444domains.com