Software w/ Source for Sale?

frambooz asks: "As the GNU public license (amongst others) describes, you can make software that is free (as in freedom), but you don't have to make it *free* (as in free beer). I'm wondering if industry officials are aware of this fact, however. Do you know of any software packages that are Open Source, but still require you to purchase them? Did you ever work on such a project as a programmer yourself? If so, how did the development differ from a free(dom)/free(beer) Open Source application?"

Comments

Re:Forgive my ignorance, but how?

[(H)elix1]

How can you give away the source for free, yet also charge for the software? What stops people just downloading the source and compiling it, without paying?

The build process for some things is not trivial... Some of the big distros - SuSE and Redhad enterprise versions don't (and I could be wrong, but bare with me) have the source code available. Reproducing those distros in the binary bootable iso format is not for the faint of heart. Look at the elbow grease it took to get White Box Linux - compiled from the source of RHEL - up and running. In corporate, it is often easier to buy open source kit than get it running yourself. As a bonus, you get someone else to take care of the maintenance....