Question about charge for source CD distribution.

[Joseph Heenan]

Hi,

On 15/12/2011 10:42, J.M. Becker wrote:
> Hello GPL Violations,
>
> I have searched and scoured, to the best of my abilities.  I'm looking 
> for verification of this line, "You may charge a fee for the physical 
> act of transferring a copy"
>
> Does this cover just the "physical" costs?  such as CD, shipping and 
> handling,.. etc
>
> or are things like "employee work time" covered?  I really hope not, 
> as at what hourly rate what an "employee" be charged? 
>  how capable must he be?  Could the CEO at 1000$ an hour, be the one 
> who does that request?
> What if its an IT company, and the lowest paid employee is 50$ an 
> hour?  How should the payment be accepted?  Could someone choose 
> significantly difficult ways of receiving payment?
>
Assuming GPLv2, the more relevant phrase for source distribution is 
probably this one (given the situation you describe):

    *"b)* Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
    years, to give any third party, *for a charge no more than your cost
    of physically performing source distribution*, a complete
    machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
    distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
    customarily used for software interchange; or, "

This makes it quite clear that it is the provider's actual incurred 
costs, not some random made up figure that they charge the employee out at.

I think it would be difficult to justify that the physical act would 
consume an hour of an employee's time.

I don't think it mentions anything restrictions on payment. I'm not sure 
how difficult you could make payment - if it went to court, I would 
expect the court to take exception to anything overly unreasonable that 
appears to have been picked with the objective of making payment 
difficult (depending which jurisdiction you / the company is in).

Joseph

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