[OT] Making money with GPLed Software / Fairness

From: Holger Hoffmann (nospam.holger.hoffmann_at_gmx.de)
Date: 09/11/03 

Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 09:00:01 +0200

Hi all!

First of all: sorry for the crosspost, but I don't have a clue who to
ask and where to ask, so I thought I give it a try in these groups.

I'm really in a dilemma: next to my (CS) studies I work to earn some
extra $$$, and in the future I'm planning to employ GPLed software to
solve a problem (e.g. writing a letter with OpenOffice) and/or use GPLed
software in solutions (e.g. building a fileserver using FreeBSD).

I assume that:
- I must not promote my work with the other software
- I must not charge people for this software
- I do have to release my additions to the software as GPL as well
- I may charge my customers for e.g. installing/configuring the software

Is that correct?
Now for the really hard part: what if I want to give something back to
the various projects?
a.) When using RedHat on a machine it's easy: just buy a license from
RedHat for the customer.
b.) When using FreeBSD it get's harder: can I buy a license? Can I
charge my customer $50 and donate it to the FreeBSD Foundation (or
whoever)? Is $50 too much, enough, not enough?
c.) Even trickier: When I design & implement a dynamic website: do I
donate to the PHP Project since I'm using PHP? Should I donate to
Apache? MySQL? Or should that be the problem of the guys actually
hosting the site?

I'd really appreciate your feedback to see if my understanding of the
GPL is correct and what others think is fair when making money with the
help of software released under the GPL.

TIA!
Holger

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