software development projects or to the Free Software Foundation. This way you can advance the world of free software.
In order to contribute funds, you need to have some extra. If you charge too low a fee, you won’t have anything to spare to support development.
People sometimes worry that a high distribution fee will put free software out of range for users who don’t have a lot of money. With proprietary software, a high price does exactly that—but free software is different.
The difference is that free software naturally tends to spread around, and there are many ways to get it.
Software hoarders try their damnedest to stop you from running a proprietary program without paying the standard price. If this price is high, that does make it hard for some users to use the program.
With free software, users don’t
Another common concern is for the popularity of free software. People think that a high price for distribution would reduce the number of users, or that a low price is likely to encourage users.
This is true for proprietary software—but free software is different. With so many ways to get copies, the price of distribution service has less effect on popularity.
In the long run, how many people use free software is determined mainly by how much free software can do, and how easy it is to use. Many users do not make freedom their priority; they may continue to use proprietary software if free software can’t do all the jobs they want done. Thus, if we want to increase the number of users in the long run, we should above all develop more free software.
The most direct way to do this is by writing needed free software or manuals yourself. But if you do distribution rather than writing, the best way you can help is by raising funds for others to write them.
Strictly speaking, “selling” means trading goods for money. Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.
However, when people think of “selling software,” they usually imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software proprietary rather than free.
So unless you’re going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term “selling software” and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say “distributing free software for a fee”—that is unambiguous.
Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It’s up to you, and the marketplace, so don’t complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy.
The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code. Those who do this are required by the GNU GPL to provide source code on subsequent request. Without a limit on the fee for the source code, they would be able set a fee too large for anyone to pay—such as a billion dollars—and thus pretend to release source code while in truth concealing it. So in this case we have to limit the fee for source in order to ensure the user’s freedom. In ordinary situations, however, there is no such justification for limiting distribution fees, so we do not limit them.
Sometimes companies whose activities cross the line stated in the GNU GPL plead for permission, saying that they “won’t charge money for the GNU software” or such like. That won’t get them anywhere with us. Free software is about freedom, and enforcing the GPL is defending freedom. When we defend users’ freedom, we are not distracted by side issues such as how much of a distribution fee is charged. Freedom is the issue, the whole issue, and the only issue.
Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This essay was originally published on http://gnu.org, in 1996. This version is part of
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire chapter are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Chapter 11.
The Free Software Song
The lyrics of “The Free Software Song” are sung to the melody of the Bulgarian folk song “Sadi moma bela loza.”[*] To listen to a recording of the piece accompanied by Bulgarian instruments played in traditional style, please visit http://gnu.org/music/FreeSWSong.ogg.
