Re: [Audacity-devel] Licensing issue?

[Dominic M. <do...@mi...>]

Tony wrote:
> I think that GPL license doesn't cover commercial use at all.
> Otherwise, all distributions of Linux would be free and we all know
> that it depends on extra-license information (not everyone is ready to
> give away their software for free commercial use). As far as I
> understand GPL license text (and it is kinda confusing, don't everyone
> agree), non-commercial use and source code are granted, but commercial
> users have to pay for software if authors decide so.

No, this isn't correct.  See the GPL FAQ:

   http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLCommercially

> In this case, I
> think Dominic and other authors wanted to emphasize that parts of
> source code may be included in non-commercial projects for free, but
> commercial projects need an extra license based on author's will.
> In any case, I think Dominic will have to say more regarding this
> topic.

Nope - GPL software is allowed to be used in commercial software,
as long as they release the source code, too.  For example, Apple
distributes many GPL'd programs with Mac OS X, along with many
non-free ones.

Nyquist was originally free for non-commercial use.  It has now
been dual-licensed under a BSD-style license, which allows
commercial use as well, making it compatible with Audacity's GPL.

- Dominic