I wanted to get his take on 3D printing. When the cost of reproducing physical goods approaches zero, it will then take on some of the same economics as software, and the same battles will be fought again. Imagine if you purchase & download a set of chess pieces to print locally, but you can only print one, and can't modify them. The GPL suddenly has applications in the physical world. But it's far more than chess pieces at stake. Anything you can buy at walmart, that's made of plastic, could be made at home eventually. If you have $15 to $50k, you can do it today. Jeremy On Wednesday 22 October 2008 11:34:40 am Smith, Craig A wrote: > Joshua Radkewrote: > > a feature of the GPL ... that restricts (my own word) the > > freedom of a distributor ... to preserve the greater freedom. > > In Stallman's own words (from the preamble to the GPL): > > The licenses for most software ... are designed to take away your > freedom ... > By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee > your freedom ... > To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these > rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have > certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if > you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others. > > source http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html > > (this document also outlines the 4 Freedoms) > > You are free to make changes and keep them private. The responsibility > to provide source only "kicks in" when you distribute. This prevents > corporations from taking GPL code, creating a private fork with some > trivial obfuscation, and selling vastly overpriced binaries - selfishly > riding on the backs of others. > > Selling *is* permitted and some companies (Red Hat, Ubuntu) have been > wildly successful. But this isn't a good business model for others > (Microsoft, Adobe) - since who would pay $$$ when you can compile the > code yourself (or download a binary from someone who can)? > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list