Software licenses and releasing Python programs for review

[Paul Rubin]

"poisondart" <poisondart985 at gmail.com> writes:
> If this thread has shown anything it is I'm a bit green with respect to
> software licenses, but the other thing is that I consider myself as an
> isolated case and I wanted to know if there were others who wanted the
> same thing as me.

You're going through the same issues that most of us involved in free
software have gone through at some time.  Welcome.

> I'm curious to know what the money that open source or GPL'd projects
> get and what this money means to these people's overall income. 

Well, it varies, but I'd say most of the time, it's done as a
community contribution, not for money.  It's similar to doctors doing
free medical clinics, lawyers doing pro bono legal work, etc.
However, it's possible to make a living writing GPL'd code, and some
people do that.  (I've done it in the past).

> Yes, what I ask may seem ridiculous, but I don't view it that way.
> Instead, I find that it is the implication of using a restrictive
> license such as I described to be ridiculous: if there is no monetary
> gain option in the license, then this implies that nobody (or very few)
> will be willing to do any work or "asking for something for nothing".
> It isn't for nothing if you value knowledge and learning.

Well, long experience has shown that in practice, such clauses tend to
turn away users and developers.

> I admit that my view is a bit idealistic which leads me to believe that
> maybe I should reconsider the whole decision altogether.

The really idealistic view is that once the program is published, the
author has no special relation to it that others don't have.  This is
what the GPL tries to approximate, by giving users similar rights to
the author's (e.g. guaranteed access to the source code).  

Note also that in your other posts, you're using "selling" in an
imprecise and confusing way.  This might help:

  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Some more articles on the general free software topic:

   http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/