Hmmmm Vitual Moon Atlas on Ebay

[Psychobilly]

Check this out...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VIRTUAL-MOON-ATLAS-SOFTWARE-VIEW-THE-MOONS-DETAIL-IN-3D_W0QQitemZ300299833096QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Telescopes?hash=item300299833096&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1690%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

Hmmm....

Nice work if you can get it i suppose ...

[jgs001]

A bit iffy for free downloadable software...

Playing devils advocate, it is a DVD in a box, so not sure he'd be making money on the software aspect of it and he may have discussed distro rights.

He has added this :

"Note to eBay Staff: We are authorized to distribute this software under GNU General Public License (GPL)."

to the auction to try and cover it. I'm not sure about the GPL for disto rights in this manner.

I should point out I'm not condoning it, after all why pay for something you can download for free.

[JohnWC]

DON'T BUY IT - ITS A FREE DOWNLOAD.

I DOWNLOADED IT AFTER SEEING IT ON EBAY AND WAS SUSPICIOUS

[kniclander]

I'd be amazed if the General Public Licence licensed people to sell free software

[Ben Ritchie]

I'd be amazed if the General Public Licence licensed people to sell free software

Actually it does - 'free' does not directly apply to price, it applies to the freedom associated with the software. "Free as in speech, not as in beer" is the saying.

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

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

[Ben Ritchie]

I should point out I'm not condoning it, after all why pay for something you can download for free.

No broadband internet access? Less common these days, but i've paid money for GPL-licenced software in the past - looking at the auction in question, how much profit do you reckon he's making on £1.99 + 99p P&P + ebay fees?

edit - should point out that the auction's nothing to do with me, but it doesn't seem unreasonable either. One advantage of the low costs of redistributing this stuff on ebay is that the market rapidly drives any profits down to (under) minimum wage

[tinvek]

he s also flogging stellarium and open office amongst others. i suppose if you couldn't get broadband these disks might be attractive and at least he has kept his costs low, theres disks available of rfactor mods which are priced far higher

[jgs001]

Ben, agreed and I'm sure that this will suit some people nicely, and that was part of my point, I can't see him making a lot of money out of this, most of the cost of charge is going on the box, disk and fees.

[Psychobilly]

I suppose you could argue he is providing a "service" to the soggy string community... although ebay on soggy string is a bit of a mare anyway...but thats an entirely different matter...

I almost got caught on open office last weekend... like the way they register domain names close to the "official" ones....

Billy....

[adamsp123]

Get the same software for free here http://www.ap-i.net/avl/en/download

[The Warthog]

Well, thanks to this reminder, I jus tput it on my new computer. It's a nice tool, andd the new one shows the dark side as well, which is nice to look at.