Joerg Mayer schrieb:
On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 02:19:43PM -0800, Ruben Junkie wrote:
So I was lurking around eBay and found that seller
redlinedit<http://myworld.ebay.com/redlinedit/>is selling copies of
wireshark.... which is totally wrong ... this people
who think that they can take advantage of free distributed software must be
stopped ...
http://cgi.ebay.com/World-Leading-Internet-Network-Analyzer-Sniffer_W0QQitemZ260211008887QQihZ016QQcategoryZ3806QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
also I dugged the story for more media coverage ..
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Wireshark_sold_on_eBay_Bad_seller_BAD
AFAIKT, the offer is perfectly legal. In return, I could legally sell
you gcc or other Free Software. Free in Free Software means freedom of
speech, not free as in free beer. The GPL does not forbid to sell this
software, nor do we. The only thing that the seller could do to make
this sale illegal would be to violate the GPL by lets say remove the
copyright/license information and the like or by refusing to provide
the wireshark source on request of a buyer. But unless (s)he does this,
they are perfectly ok.
Hey, someone paid around 12 Euros for a wireless extension cord (aka
air), so why not sell Wireshark? If someone buys wireshark who would
otherwise not have found and used Wireshark: Great!
You are perfectly right - as long as the terms of the GPL are fulfilled,
this is ok for me!
However, you sometimes wonder how strange the world will get from here -
seen from today where it's already very strange ;-)
But it seems to be the business model of this seller, on related
auctions there's also audacity, americas army, (blender?) ... all at
least freeware!
Regards, ULFL
P.S: He's not alone:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Advanced-Internet-Sniffer-Network-Analyzer-WEP_W0QQitemZ250213230167QQihZ015QQcategoryZ68258QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem