I came across something, which is licensed under GNU. I assume they can be sold from reading the license because of this line: "For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received." Do I understand correctly? Thanks!
Well, as it stands, you cannot sell the GNU program per se but you can charge for the media and the labor cost involved in packaging the program collection or bandwidth cost. So if you download and burn the programs to CD or DVD for distribution, you can charge for the work involved in downloading and putting them on CD/DVD. Your customers would have the option to make free copies and distribute them without paying you anything or violating any licenses.
The whole idea is if you sold a program, the source code had to come with it. So if you write a program, and put the GPL license on it, you could sell it long as the source code is available. Now could you take a program/script whatever, written by someone else and sell it as your own. It isn't generally done. The support or media method eddy2099 mentions is how companies get around this. Now some like SUSE Linux who add value to the package and even RedHat charges for their enterprise server. That's the more typical method for a software company to make $$ of open source software. Take GPL code, improve it, sell it. Why wouldn't you just take it and sell it? Well, how would you feel if you paid for something everybody else got for free? Would you purchase from that company again?
Hello, How about if I develop and copyright a website on my own. Then I add some internal php scripts to my website that are under the GNU license. How do I keep compliant with the GNU rules? Thanks, Jack
Depends on how tightly you couple your site with the GPL scripts. Best course is to keep them at arm's length. And that's a real gray area. Say you use a captcha script on your site, does the entire site then become GPL? I would say no if the captcha script is called from another script. It performs its single function and that's all it does. Others would disagree and I have seen people go out of their way to avoid a GPL script thinking it will make their entire site GPL. Which would be bizarre. Also pulls up the entire concept of is use of a site distribution of the software? I again say it isn't. If it was, the source code would have to be made available. But I see the difference here in that providing the source code to a site wouldn't allow for the spirit of the GPL to remain. It was meant to allow modification of programs for the users. If I run a website and someone doesn't like how X is accomplished, they can't modify the code and upload it to my server to make it work how they want. They could setup their own server and do as they please. Not really salient points, but I doubt it will ever really be hashed out in a court on this point. So its pretty much down to opinion.
If you are talking about a website, like shallowink is, you MAY be able to separate the software that was released under a GPL from what you have created. In many cases, clients have come to me with much more complicated facts. Picture, for example, a complex inventory management program that incorporates a GPL word processing program and a GPL random number generator as functional and integral pieces of the program. My recommendation would be to write their own or find modules or scripts that they could license for a fee. I think that there is a very real risk that building the program around even a single GPL component could jeopardize the company's ability to keep its own source code under wraps.