L'auteur lui-même les a apportées suite aux commentaires sur son article. Voici donc ce qu'il dit :
Program that uses the software can be sold commercially? No** (except by copyright holder)
[**Note: If you take "sold" to mean charge for distributing, charge for bundling and packaging, charge for reproducing, charge for support, and charge for indemnification, then the answer is Yes. This is the RedHat model. However if by "sold" you mean "paid a fee for a license to use" then the answer is No. Working at a commercial software developer that does charge such fees, the latter definition is most natural to me, so it's the meaning I'm using for this article. -22jun/ebb]
Son approche est dirigée par son expérience (développeur de logiciels propriétaires) et est sévèrement biaisée sur ce point-là... Du coup, si on ne parle plus de la même chose, ça en devient difficile de se comprendre.
Ceci dit, il me semble que la GPL est assez claire sur ce point : on peut vendre un logiciel, c'est-à-dire que l'on vend l'accès aux sources ou aux binaires. Ce n'est effectivement pas une licence d'utilisation que l'on vend...
FAQ de la GPL a écrit:Does the GPL allow me to ***spam*** copies of the program for money? Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to ***spam*** copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
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.
Ceci dit, j'aime assez l'approche utilisée par l'auteur : l'arbre de décision. Peut-être un aspect à développer plus en avant pour VVL.
Reste que le choix de la licence peut venir simplement des composants liés au logiciel, comme on est en train de le comprendre (devrais-je dire "douloureusement" ?
) en ce moment-même... Donc l'arbre de décision peut être une très bonne idée pour des logiciels "complets" (qui ne font appel à aucun autre composant).
