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Old 11-27-06, 06:34 AM   #44
squirrel777
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: London, UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Albrecht Von Hesse
Actually you can do something about it. It's called 'intellectual property' and 'tangible property', and copyright laws cover software. Just because something is being distributed free by the owner and developer doesn't make it legal for someone else to sell it and make money from that if they haven't been given permission to do so.
As I said previously, DftD being released under the GPL, it is perfectly legal to distribute it, even for a profit. Copyright laws apply, and in that case, the devs hold the copyright and explicitely (by releasing their software under the GPL) allow everybody to copy, distribute, modify, etc... THEIR software under the condition of the GPL (most importantly that any modification of the software must also be released under the GPL).
So apexsoftware indeed have the permission from the devs to distribute the software (as long as they follow the GPL).

Don't get me wrong, I don't try to defend apexsoftware in any way, and I think what they do is, from a moral point of view, at least dubious, and certainly dishonest. I'm just trying to clear the legal issue a bit, it's what "free software" (not freeware) is and what it implies.

But as the devs said, the product may be described in a misleading and false way, and this may be illegal.
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