You're not listening at all are you?

Have you even read anything that was written on the previous page?

Have you even read the GNU Public Licence? Or are you selectively ignoring things in hopes that if you ignore it enough, it will go away? If you've chosen to ignore the GPL, have you used your meager funding to hire a lawyer as well? Because I'm certain that the Free Software Foundation will want to have a chat with him if you do.

Maybe you should also get your facts straight too before you start to even speak. It appears that Freepeers has more than one programmer working on Bearshare.

How do you expect the guy to make a buck so he can continue development? He should be able to make a buck on his work. I like the idea of a good no adware client. How do you explain how Red Hat charges when it's GPL?

Redhat sells precompiled and preconfigured packages of programs. You can get the source code, but compiling all the programs and building a linux system from scratch can mean a lot of work...

There are 2 instances under the GPL that allows Red Hat to make their money. Just to qualify my point, here's the clause of the GPL I refer to:
It seems to me that Red Hat charges for the act of creating a CD for you and for the limited warranty they provide with their retail versions.

If someone wants to "make a buck" from selling a Gnutella servent, he/she would have to make that buck by developing their own software from scratch. The makers of Moose aren't doing any "work" by riding the progress of an already fully developed client. Now, unless they can distribute their servent and charge under the guise of providing a warranty of some sort, then that's fine. However, they still would have to make their source available to whomever wants it... free of charge of course. If not, then they're clearly in violation of the GPL and can be taken to court.

If you want a good no adware client, then why don't you use Gnucleus? You know.... the FREE GPL software that Moose is going to be based on. Besides that, there's already an ad free version of LimeWire that cost HALF as much as would be charged for Moose.

But, that all being said, I'm just the messenger. I didn't make the rules... and the makers of Moose will have to take it up with the Free Software Foundation if they feel they don't like it. (Not that there's much they could do about it.) And, being the messenger, I'll make sure the FSF knows all the details if I find out that they're not following the GPL.

However, all this may be in vain. After all, the makers of Moose have not yet said whether they plan on complying with the GPL. If so, then this discussion is moot.

Really?

If that's the case, I am confused by this following clause of the GPL:
In my interpretation (of course, I am only a programmer and not a lawyer) this means that a person cannot charge for a program that was derived from another piece of software that they obtained for free (and has been released under the GPL). I, however, am quite freely willing to admit that I could be wrong.

Maybe you can help clear things up a bit.

Hmmm... I guess I had a couple too many electric popsicles tonight so my thoughts are a bit clouded... So, if I understand you correctly, you're agreeing that ultimately, a person (or company) couldn't take a GPL'ed piece of software available for free (like Gnucleus) and create a derivative work from it and then charge for that derivative work? Ultimately, that's what I'm trying to make sure of.

So I can download the most recent, complete, up to date, no adware "pay for" version of LimeWire somewhere on your site? Where? Did I miss the link?
Or are you selectivly using GPL on parts of the code?
Didn't Morpheus basicly do this? Grab Gnucleus and then "charge" for it through adware? Did anyone get upset and call the FSF over that? Should we?
Anyone have a good link explaining this GPL profit motive in plain english?

As I said before, the way I understand it is you may create a derivitive work, and even charge for it. However, because of the GPL all source code must be released, so making a free version will never be impossible.

And yes, you can get the free source code from www.limewire.org. Of course they don't distribute a free (and ad-free) compiled program on limewire.com, they wouldn't make any profit that way. But you can search for clean Limewire, which if I remember correctly is hosted on a geocities site somewhere (though it gets subjected to heavy loads).

That's a really good question. As I understand it, under the GPL any derivitive work must release the source code that was used. Isn't Limewire Pro basically a derivitive work of the free version?

Then again, Limewire Pro may contain some code altered enough to no longer require coverage under the GPL from the free version. In which case they wouldn't be required to release those parts of the code.

[P.S.]
As I understand it a link to download the source isn't required anywhere, but the source must be available by request (example: asking for via email.)

The source code for Moose has been previously released at gnucleus.net
The serial number and other special features are locked in a private binary that is highly connected and compiled into the code base to protect our time investment. This is also legal under the GPL.
Moose checks into the home site every so often to check for new versions, obtain a fresh list of hosts, and confirm the serial number.
A small amount of statistical information is transfered at that time via a secured encrypted connection. Things like what types of files were downloaded, number of megabytes transfered, how many connections were dropped, keywords searched, file content type, horizon size, files shared, connection speed, service provider, etc. This information is added to a large statistical database for general overall statistical information only and will not be specific to any user. It will all be laid out in our new privacy policy that must be agreed to when you first run Moose.
We will have a very comprehensive statistics web page available to our subscribed users on the web site. We provide valuable information to all our users.
The Moose is coming along quite nicely.

Use the Moose!