“Over the last year, it seems as if this issue has popped up
more and more. On LinuxToday, for instance, community interest in
Napster was incredibly high. Many would have had it become some
sort of misguided rallying cry for the Free Software movement, as
if our interest in software freedom somehow translates to an
interest in distributing the work of others at no charge, with no
hope of remuneration for the person producing the work, that’s good
enough to take up our time and hard drive space, but somehow isn’t
good enough to pay for….”
“I’ve had the good fortune to talk to Shawn Gordon twice in the
last few days, once to get the details on Kivio itself, and once
for a more rambling discussion that touched on, among other things,
what amounts to a real show of faith on his part. He’s given away
the razor, and he’s not even asking that you don’t make razor
blades for yourself: he’s just asking that you don’t carry the ones
he makes out of the store in your pocket.”
“He’s also very upfront about how closely he’ll be watching the
success of this experiment in marketing GPL’d software:”
“‘If people abuse it,’ he says, ‘we won’t pursue this model
again.’