[buug] GPL & selling preconfigured machines

[f.johan.beisser]

On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, Mark Hedges wrote:

> Will the GPL get in the way of me buying old computers, rigging
> them with Linux and then selling them as cheap Internet stations?

as long as you provide the source code, somewhere (either for download, or
via cdrom) you should be fine. read the GPL
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) and make sure. it's fairly plain
english, and written to be relatively unambiguious.

> I know I cannot charge on the invoice for the operating system,
> but can I charge a labor fee for setting it up?  How's that work?

you can charge whatever you want. as long as you provide the source code,
binaries, and such to the user you're not in violation of the GPL. if you
make any changes to the Linux distrobution (which you're allowed to do)
you have to provide those changes and/or hand those changes back to the
creator.

the GPL is about software, and the rights of a programmer and consumer to
it.

besides, you're talking about charging for your time, effort and hardware.
you have the right to do that, no matter what.

> Thanks for any info... --mark--

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

-------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+
  http://caustic.org/~jan                      jan at caustic.org
    "John Ashcroft is really just the reanimated corpse
         of J. Edgar Hoover." -- Tim Triche