[vlc] Some website want us to pay for your software

[Jean-Paul Saman]

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 7:20 AM, alexandre penombre
<alexandre.penombre at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am actually astonished since when I downloaded your software on a website
> : http://vlc-mediaplayer-2010.com
> This last one, asked me to send him a sms in order to pay him 4€, for using
> your software.
> That is why I have to report this to you, in order to find a solution for
> website like it.
>

>From our FAQ: http://www.videolan.org/support/faq.html

Third parties are selling your software. Is this legal?

Yes, absolutely.

Our licensing terms explicitly allow selling or sublicensing our
software. We allow that very much on purpose. For instance, we like
computer magazines to include our software on their CDs, and we also
like Linux distributions, PC manufacturers and storage device vendors
to pre-install our software and make money out of it. For us, that is
basically zero-cost advertisement. See also the rationale from the
Free Software Foundation (those who wrote our licensing terms).

We reckon that certain form of sales, such as online commercial
downloads, provide no value to us neither our customers. Many people
consider those sales to be deceptive, if not outright fraudulent. As
our software can be downloaded for free from our website and mirrors,
there should be no need to pay. Unfortunately, it is impossible to
differentiate good and bad sales, so we allow all of them. Besides, we
are open-source enthusiasts, not lawyers.

gtz
Jean-Paul Saman.