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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?"
Do you know of any software packages that are Open Source, but still require you to purchase them?
How about Trolltech's Qt for Windows? It's strictly commercial, but comes with source code. Actually lots of commercial development tools and libraries fit this model, probably because programmers find tools that provide source code to be much more useful. It's also quite common among certain software packages used by big business: packages that have to be heavily customized. Every large-scale point-of-sale software package (e.g. the software that runs the checkout lanes at the grocery store) comes with a source license, or makes one available for a reasonable fee (which everyone buys as a matter of course).
Binary-only software is a very new thing, historically. It was really quite uncommon prior to the rise of microcomputers, probably because the people who ran and managed the workstations, minis and mainframes were largely programmers and they found that software with source was more useful (who'da thunkit?).
If you're referring to software that is licensed under an open source license that allows redistribution, then no, I don't think you'll find too many packages that fit the model, and I don't think authors who try to do that will be immensely successful at selling software. But selling software with source works just fine, thanks to the power of copyright law. And selling services and support around truly Free Software works pretty well also.
Actually, I think that people who expect copyright protection for binary-only software are abusing copyright. The purpose of the law is to promote the growth of science and useful arts by encouraging publication, so that other people can learn from the ideas to create even more stuff. But these days we allow people to eat their cake and have it too; they can both obtain society's help in protecting their source code from illicit copying *and* they can also keep it secret to prevent people from learning their ideas. IMO, if you don't want to publish source code, you shouldn't get copyright protection for your source code. Use trade secret law to protect it. That's not as good, because under trade secret law if someone leaks it you can only go after the leaker, not anyone else who distributed the now-public information, but that's the tradeoff you should have to make: If I publish my ideas so others can build on them, then society will help me make sure no one copies my code, or creats unauthorized derivative works. If I keep my ideas secret, then I have to protect my code myself (I can still get copyright protection on the published binaries, however).
Unfortunately, old copyright law never foresaw that it might be possible to publish your work while simultaneously keeping it secret, and new copyright law has forgotten all about the need to balance private vs. public good.
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Have any games companies released a game that used the GPL version of the Quake 2 engine? It would seem to me that it's a pretty good deal: just stick a tar of the source on the CD and you've forefilled the requirements of the GPL. Of course, your content need not be distributed under the GPL.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Surely, a game using the Quake 2 engine is a derived work of that engine. So if you want to release such a game you either do it under the GPL or you pay id for a commercial license of the engine.
BTW, that is the same trick that Borland used for Kylix. You can use the free version of Kylix, but if you do, you can only distribute your programs under the GPL. If you pay for Kylix, you can distribute your programs any way you like.