Free software sold on E-bay!

[tin2tin]

I'm getting pretty sick of commercial use of mine and other's free software:

Ebay

Ebay2

Any idears on how to avoid this?

[lordsmurf]

Report it to eBay Safe Harbor.

The image in the auction is from an Adobe CS3 demonstration found for free on adobe.com. I'm sure Adobe would be pretty pissed. Contact them too. I just watched that demo not 5 days ago.

[tekkieman]

If your software is licensed under the GPL, you could contact the FSF for assistance. Also, you could contact the seller/Ebay and inform them they are violating copyright.

[liquid217]

As long as they are distributing the sourcecode, along with the software, is that not compliant with the GPL? Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be too happy if I saw something I had worked on being sold like that on Ebay, but I believe that the GPL allows software to be sold as long as the licence and sourcecode are distributed with it.

[Ai Haibara]

I'd think that would only apply if you were the creator/programmer who created the programs, though.

[CogoSWSDS]

Under the GPL, you are not allowed to sell the software. You are allowed to charge a small fee for distributing the software, but may not charge for the software itself. You must also make the source code and license available to the person/organization you are distributing it to, or include it with the distribution. As long as the seller acknowledges that this fee is for distributing the software, and not for the software itself, this is, I believe, perfectly legal under the GPL. The buyer is free to give this software away or distribute it any way they see fit as long as it follows the GPL.

CogoSWSDS

[tin2tin]

Thanks for all of your thoughts. I guess these days with faster connections the things about pay for distribution with cd's are getting obsolete. Maybe I should try to look for a licence which insists on keeping the software free at all times, and it can't be used for commercial purposes.

[liquid217]

Don't forget that since you are distributing GPL'ed binaries with your package, that you also need to adhere to their licencing agreements. I was contacted by a member of the cygwin project that was more than helpful in getting my distribution to be gpl compliant, even though my GUI was not GPL (at that time), there were still several things I was not doing right.

Obviously, I decided to license my project as GPL as well.

[nwo]

Stick a flash screen when the program start up saying you cant buy or sell it, and add a report the seller to the FBI link.