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Is this really legal?

Gy Stargazer

By Gy Stargazer
in The Astro Lounge

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Gy Stargazer

Gy Stargazer

Posted
Posted

Just been browsing on ebay and i came along this:-

Pro Astronomy Software star maps sky charts planetarium on eBay (end time 17-Jul-10 22:58:21 BST)

A few things seem strange.

The logo for the sale is that of Stellarium.

The images from the program are that of Stellarium.

This is a FREE program.

Is it legal to be sold on ebay?

Surely there has got to be some issues with this.

A FREE Astronomy program made by Astronomers for Astronomers.

Being sold by someone else.

There is no recognition for the actual makers of the program.

Scot

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barkis

barkis

Posted
Posted

I think he is acknowledging that it is a freely available programme, and he is only claiming the rights to the bits he has added.

That's how I read it. Let's see what others say about it though.

Ron.

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jgs001

jgs001

Posted
Posted

I'm not a lawyer, and don't know the specifics, but it's my understanding that whilst you are not allowed to make any money from GPL licensed products, you are allowed to charge reasonable costs for redistribution on media. So if I've understood it correctly, this isn't actually in breach of the license. Would I go buy it... that's another question entirely...

GPL I believe also means that the original license must be included with the software, but you can't find that out without purchasing it in the first place...

The GNU General Public License - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

I'm happy to be corrected by those more knowledgeable

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jgs001

jgs001

Posted
Posted

Distribution under the GPL is encouraged, as long as the software remains (although there does appear to be provision for adding your own alterations to it too) and the license remains intact. In fact it looks to me, as if it's actively encouraged.

I think the question is, is £3 reasonable for distribution of media etc... that's gonna be hard to prove one way or the other...

From the GPL FAQ's

Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?

Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide “equivalent access” to download the source—therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.

Does the GPL allow me to require that anyone who receives the software must pay me a fee and/or notify me?

No. In fact, a requirement like that would make the program non-free. If people have to pay when they get a copy of a program, or if they have to notify anyone in particular, then the program is not free. See the definition of free software.

The GPL is a free software license, and therefore it permits people to use and even redistribute the software without being required to pay anyone a fee for doing so.

If I distribute GPL'd software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?

No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public.

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Brett

Brett

Posted
Posted

Just a little snippet I found on sourceforge:

You are welcome to use Stellarium it in your business. You are permitted to copy, it, download and build the source code, make changes to the source code and re-distribute your modified version of the program. You are even allowed to charge your customers a fee for distribution.

You must however, publish the source code to any modified version under the GPU GPL license, making it available to anyone to whom you supply binaries. You are not allowed to charge for this. You may not use a different license for your modified version.

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Doc

Doc

Posted
Posted

Here's his reply.

Hi there and thanks for your questions - Yes!, well spotted! It is indeed Stellarium. To answer your second question, well, Stellarium is not a company, so 'they' do not 'know' that I am selling it. There's nobody to 'know' or not know. However, as for the legality of it, if you look at the Stellarium site, you will find links to the GNU-GPL Software Licence under which Stellarium is licensed; in there you will be able to read that it is perfectly legal for me to sell this software, the same as it is for all software released under the GNU-GPL License. I hope this answers your questions! As an aside, it is my mission in this business not solely to make a profit, but also to bring these marvellous pieces of software to people who otherwise would not have known about them! Anyway nice talking to you and if you have any further questions, please just drop me a line ;) Best regards, Tony Cutcliffe --- Business Manager, Tony's Software Shop

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LukeSkywatcher

LukeSkywatcher

Posted
Posted
Here's his reply.

Hi there and thanks for your questions - Yes!, well spotted! It is indeed Stellarium. To answer your second question, well, Stellarium is not a company, so 'they' do not 'know' that I am selling it. There's nobody to 'know' or not know. However, as for the legality of it, if you look at the Stellarium site, you will find links to the GNU-GPL Software Licence under which Stellarium is licensed; in there you will be able to read that it is perfectly legal for me to sell this software, the same as it is for all software released under the GNU-GPL License. I hope this answers your questions! As an aside, it is my mission in this business not solely to make a profit, but also to bring these marvellous pieces of software to people who otherwise would not have known about them! Anyway nice talking to you and if you have any further questions, please just drop me a line ;) Best regards, Tony Cutcliffe --- Business Manager, Tony's Software Shop

So we could all make hard copies of Stellarium and sell them LEGALLY?

That doesnt sound right to me. Even if Stellarium is an open source program (which i was not aware that it is), this guy is saying that if we even add one line of code to it or alter it in any way (graphics etc) that we can then sell it as our own?

I dont think so.

He keeps saying "if they dont know"....this to me says what he is doing is highly ILLEGAL.

Has anyone contacted the creators of Stellarium and pointed them in this guys direction?.

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The Sailor

The Sailor

Posted
Posted

Having read what he is doing, gotten the same reply from him, I cannot see a problem, in fact I might even agree with him. What he is doing is packaging a number of programmes into a cd with all the instructions therein. Now for the price he is asking it is not too bad, thinking back to the early '80's and the DOS discs I bought this is not different. His disc, his packaging and postage and all those programmes under one roof, maybe they are free but I remember when I used to get a disc like that and wonder at the programmes, so I think he is actually helping people to get progs they may never have heard about. I know there will be people out there who will disagree, good on you ;)

Jim

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great_bear

great_bear

Posted
Posted

I'm afraid what Tony's doing is perfectly legal.

Nor does he have to inform the Stellarium authors of what he is doing.

This situation has always been (in my mind) the "Elephant in the room" about the Free Software Foundation's philosophy as dreamt up by its founder, Richard Stallman. i.e. As a Software Engineer, you're not allowed to charge ANY money (per copy) for creating GPL software - no matter how inventive or creative you have been, but as a MARKETING person, you're actually allowed to charge whatever you like (per copy) for copying and distributing the software.

It's very flawed in a number of other respects too - but to be honest, we could debate the pros and cons of "free" vs. "open-source" vs. "proprietary" 'til the cows come home to no real purpose. At the end of the day, they are different software business models that "work" (however that is defined) under different circumstances.

My full-time (paid) job is being a "package owner" on the Audio part of a very big Open-Source software project as used in consumer electronics devices, and so a fair amount of my time is spent juggling these different business models! ;)

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yesyes

yesyes

Posted
Posted
Is it any different than the various distributions of Linux that are available for a fee?

James

That's what I was thinking. Red Hat Linux costs almost as much as Windows these days....

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Space Beagle

Space Beagle

Posted
Posted

It just seems to me that the guy has not bothered to make any significant changes to the applications code apart from changing the name of it to try and disguise what it really is! Seems a bit underhand to me even if it is not actually illegal!

I quite like some of the free distrubutions of Linux eg Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora etc. With these applications peoples really do try and improve the underlying code for the good of the user community.

Doc

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themos

themos

Posted
Posted
So we could all make hard copies of Stellarium and sell them LEGALLY?

Why the surprise? The software has been freed, you can do anything you like with it except take away other people's freedom.

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Daggerstab

Daggerstab

Posted
Posted

This question pops up with some regularity in Stellarium's forums and support system. (Example: a guy that actually bought a copy for $9.) Situations like this one are nothing new and this happens with other free/open-source software.

Is this really legal?

Selling Stellarium, provided that the terms of the GNU General Public License are followed, is perfectly legal.

Selling Stellarium in this way - deliberately omitting the fact that it can be downloaded for free somewhere else - may or may not be illegal, depending on the laws about false advertising, but I find it unethical. This is one of those cases when something is legal to do does not mean that it is ethical to do it.

There is no recognition for the actual makers of the program.

On the eBay listing, yes, but if that... person has removed the copyright information in the software itself, this is a breach of the GPL and Fabien and the rest (including me) can take his *** to court.

GPL I believe also means that the original license must be included with the software, but you can't find that out without purchasing it in the first place...

The GNU General Public License - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Stellarium is actually distributed under the slightly older version 2 of the GPL, or any later version. The full text of GPL v2 can be found here:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

To answer your second question, well, Stellarium is not a company, so 'they' do not 'know' that I am selling it. There's nobody to 'know' or not know.

Actually, there is a community of developers that have devoted a lot of their time to Stellarium. You know, the people in the AUTHORS file, and Fabien Chéreau in particular - Stellarium's mostly his creation. I think that there is also a foundation, the "Stellarium Foundation" or something, that accepts donations from the name of the Stellarium developer team and is run by the current two senior developers.

However, as for the legality of it, if you look at the Stellarium site, you will find links to the GNU-GPL Software Licence under which Stellarium is licensed; in there you will be able to read that it is perfectly legal for me to sell this software, the same as it is for all software released under the GNU-GPL License.

It's "GNU GPL", no hyphen anywhere. He can't even write the name of the license correctly?

I hope this answers your questions! As an aside, it is my mission in this business not solely to make a profit, but also to bring these marvellous pieces of software to people who otherwise would not have known about them! Anyway nice talking to you and if you have any further questions, please just drop me a line ;) Best regards, Tony Cutcliffe --- Business Manager, Tony's Software Shop

If this... person really wanted to "bring these marvellous pieces of software to people who otherwise would not have known about them", he could have just... posted a link to the website, or something?

But are you allowed to distribute it under a different name making it hard to recognise that this would be available at no cost elsewhere?

"Allowed", yes. "Ethically correct", no.

I had a look at the eBay listing in question. There is at least one outright false claim, perhaps someone with an eBay account should report it:

Note to eBay:

The computer program in this product is public domain software, distributed under the GNU General Public License; as such it is fully legal for me to sell this program under your CD Media policy and I confirm that no copyrights have been or will be broken in marketing this product, nor have any third party rights been infringed.

(the bold is in the original)

Stellarium is not "public domain". "Public domain" means that the copyright has expired or that the authors have surrendered all their rights (in the jurisdictions where this is possible). Stellarium is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which makes it "free software" as recognised by the Free Software Foundation. This means that the authors retain their rights, but allow other people do a lot of things with the software under certain conditions (the terms of the GPL).

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