Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : Can i sell open source software

[jonnie]

hi

Does anyone understand the limitations of open source software. If for example you customise it heavily, can you then sell it??

[SniperDevil]

It depends on which license it was released under. To an extent you cannot resell OSS under the GPL license, however there may be exceptions.

[0utlier]

To an extent you cannot resell OSS under the GPL license

Well... yes and no.

You can't "sell" open source software because you don't own the copyright. However, you can charge for the distribution so I guess in essence you are "selling" it. The below two links may help resolve your questions.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

[dkitchen]

Hi,

You can't sell it because there are parts of it you still don't own even if you did heavily customise it. However you can charge for the distribution, for example download or distribution on CD, however you have to realise that once it has been downloaded that anyone can use it free of charge.

Dan

[RajanUrs]

Originally posted by 0utlier
Well... yes and no.



http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

The explanations are explicit in the above

[Acsiak - Andrew]

If you're Linspire/Lindows... you can pretty much sell anything.