On Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 08:24:13AM -0500, Jeffrey F. Bloss wrote: > I don't see where this would be "illegal" under the GPL or your own LICENSE, > but maybe I'm missing something. I believe it's ethically abhorrent to use > free software for profit like this, but I don't see any real recourse. I don't see why it should 'ethically abhorrent' to use GPL software in a paid for-profit service, e.g. in a private Tor network with a professionally administered, global network of machines. You're charging the clients for a highly responsive private anonymizing network, and you need to cover the costs for the hosting (traffic, juice) and administration as well as end user support. This is what the clients are paying for. You have other running costs, plus have to turn a profit to make it worthwhile. This doesn't violate the letter, and not even the spirit of the GPL, provided that you give back any code changes you had to make in the project, report bugs, etc. (Of course if this turns out a viable business model donating to the individual developers is quite desired, but that's strictly an issue of individual ethics -- in fact this is not just a hypothetical scenario, as I intend to do just that, provided my future users are willing to pay for using a private Tor network). -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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