Dvorak recently claimed that the Free Software Foundation spearheads the non-commercial use group that believes "nobody should ever make any money selling or using software." Boy, did he ever miss the boat. But the fact is that some people in the community seem to believe exactly that.

One of my peers over at IT Business Edge, Lora Bentley, criticized Dvorak's arguments, correctly pointing out that he simply wrote a rant, listing complaints about the FOSS community, as opposed to a well-developed essay. She pointed out that some vendors actually make a fair sum of money from their commercial adventures in Free Software. I'm not sure whether her examples line up well with the FSF view of commercial Free Software distribution, but I do know that Ada Core Technologies is one of the best examples, since they deal exclusively in Free Software.

But I'm concerned about Dvorak's point that the Free Software Foundation "spearheads" the "non-commercial use group", as he refers to it. He claims this group is opposed to anyone ever making "any money selling or using software". It is true that the Free Software Foundation has never positioned itself as "business friendly", per se. In reality, Free Software, as a concept, is really quite neutral toward commercial distribution and use. It neither prohibits nor encourages it, but rather seeks to make it possible for anyone to use and work with the program - even to distribute it for a fee.

Dvorak's claim completely contradicts one of the fundamental freedoms inherent in the Free Software Definition. According to the official definition:

"Free software" does not mean "non-commercial". A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important."

Immediately after defining the 4 freedoms, this document states, "Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission." The point is that anyone can redistribute a Free Software program for a fee without having to ask or pay for permission to do so. That's hardly anti-commercial. In fact, it could be interpreted as encouraging more commercial redistribution of software, since removing the need to ask or pay for permission removes much of the cost barrier to becoming a commercial distributor.

It would be easy to dismiss Dvorak's claim as blatantly false and leave it at that. And yet, I have seen people in the FOSS community actually claim that it is wrong to charge a fee. These people may be Free Software supporters, but they do not necessarily represent the FSF's view of Free Software. Nor would the FSF agree with their claims. The prevailing view I have seen expressed, by a more pragmatic crowd, is that it simply doesn't make sense to charge a fee when users can download the code gratis elsewhere. Even then, the commercial redistribution of OpenOffice.org on e-Bay and in other venues demonstrates that not everyone will necessarily know the code can be obtained for free.

Companies such as Ada Core Technologies, MySQL AB and others have been successful at distributing Free Software, either under the terms of the GNU GPL, or under a dual-licensing scheme. Obviously, the preferable approach - in terms of guaranteeing users' freedom - is to adopt a strictly Free Software policy, as in the case of Ada Core Technologies. Distributing Free Software commercially is not an easy business model to sustain. But that is very different from saying that the FSF is opposed to anyone making money selling or using software.

And, by the way, I have been getting paid for the past year and a half to write about Free Software. And it happens that I use Free Software to do that. And my business, Blue Gnu Media & Technology, is already seeing several solid business opportunities, none of which require the use of non-Free software. And I'm not the only one making money using Free Software. So there goes the other half of Dvorak's claim. And, as a journalist, he really should know something - probably better than I - about checking his sources.

Note: See also this essay, Selling Free Software.