[Haskell-cafe] Re: Hugs on iPhone

[John A. De Goes]

Again, go ahead and write your GPL app -- i.e. put your money where  
your mouth is. After you spend a year developing some cool app, I'll  
take your code and sell it -- maybe under a different name, with  
different screenshots, and a different description. Or maybe I'll just  
list it in the free section so no one makes any money.

You can't make money selling "tapes" of iPhone apps because no one  
wants "tapes" and iPhone apps come exclusively from the iPhone store  
(unless you're an iPhone developer).

You simply can't make a living selling GPL software. If the software's  
complicated enough and you know your way around it, then you can sell  
support & maintenance. However, those conditions doesn't apply to  
consumer software, because consumers don't want complicated software.

Regards,

John A. De Goes
N-BRAIN, Inc.
The Evolution of Collaboration

http://www.n-brain.net    |    877-376-2724 x 101

On Mar 24, 2009, at 7:00 AM, Achim Schneider wrote:

> "John A. De Goes" <john at n-brain.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> Go ahead sell your GPL application. I'll get your code, build the
>> application, and sell it for less than half of what you're selling
>> it for.
>>
> I don't think you can go below 0.79 in the Apple store, and I guess
> you'll have a hard time convincing Apple to list your identical  
> program
> alongside with the original version.
>
>> How exactly will you make your money, then?
>>
> Selling tapes, not software. Unless you invent something like the
> internet that gets rid of time needed write tapes and package&shipment
> costs, you're going to have a very, very hard time being cheaper than
> anybody else unless you live on a different continent, and an
> incredibly hard time financing the advertisement you need to place  
> your
> product more prominently than RMS can do simply by being himself.
>
>> When people say, "You can't make commercial software with GPL code,"
>> they don't mean it's not legally possible to sell GPL code, only
>> that it's not commercially viable.
>>
> Oh, it is. Id is still selling Quake I data files, and you'll be
> surprised how much you're allowed to do since the GPL isn't the Affero
> GPL.
>
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