Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
For another, what I said was entirely consistent with the sentence you quote. He's leaving the payment up to the buyer.
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No, it isn't, at least it isn't for me. The source of calibre is licensed under the terms of GPL 3. It is "free as freedom", not necessarily "free as beer". The software CAN be sold.
I do Linux drivers for living, and have used free and open source code for long time. My contribution to the community was:
a) reporting bugs
b) submitting patches when I have need to overcome that issue,
c) providing user-to-user help with the installation, configuration and operation of FOSS software.
Other than that, I am using FOSS software as "free as beer". Now, with calibre I haven't done much of "a" and "b", and kicked in to help only in one instance with "c". The reason? I
don't use calibre much.
My collection is mainly outside of Calibre, (calibre collection is "to read" list), no need for format-shifting (I'am crafty enough with vim, perl, sed and awk), don't use newsfeeds... The mighty software serves as a preview of metadata, for all practical purposes.
Nowhere on the calibre web page have I found a reference to "purchase", "buy" or any other term that suggests that calibre is sold. If it is, I
refuse to devalue others work by offering to pay $0 dollars, even for a nonexistent use, and will remove calibre immediately from my machine. What I really, really need to do, and was postponing until now, is to have ADE running under wine. Calibre, despite my respect for a myriad of functions and all work that was thrown into it, serves only as an alternative to the vmware machine running MS Windows, ADE and Sony software.
Yes, Kovid has not corrected you, but neither has he reacted to my interpretation. Maybe this message will trigger his reaction. The difference between "free download" and "pay what you want" is
significant.