Marketing Tor (Was Re: For those using Tor with windows)

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 08:24:13AM -0500, Jeffrey F. Bloss wrote:

> I don't see where this would be "illegal" under the GPL or your own LICENSE, 
> but maybe I'm missing something. I believe it's ethically abhorrent to use 
> free software for profit like this, but I don't see any real recourse.

I don't see why it should 'ethically abhorrent' to use GPL software
in a paid for-profit service, e.g. in a private Tor network with 
a professionally administered, global network of machines.

You're charging the clients for a highly responsive private anonymizing
network, and you need to cover the costs for the hosting (traffic, juice) 
and administration as well as end user support. This is what the clients 
are paying for. You have other running costs, plus have to turn a profit
to make it worthwhile.

This doesn't violate the letter, and not even the spirit of the GPL,
provided that you give back any code changes you had to make in the
project, report bugs, etc.

(Of course if this turns out a viable business model donating to the individual
developers is quite desired, but that's strictly an issue of individual
ethics -- in fact this is not just a hypothetical scenario, as I intend
to do just that, provided my future users are willing to pay for using a 
private Tor network).

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/attachments/20051116/d15071f7/attachment.pgp>