[Catalog-sig] Commercial software listings?

[Ben Finney]

Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:

> Is PyPI intended for the listing of paid commercial software?

I would think that's fine, so long as the paid commercial software is
free software. The price paid by the recipient is orthogonal to the
freedom of the recipient in the work.

Perhaps you want instead to talk about software works that are not free;
the usual term for this is “non-free” or “proprietary” software.

I would very much prefer if PyPI were an index of free software works
for Python, and that all such works were available for download from the
site under free terms.

> I thought not, but
>
> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/emma/1.0
>
> for instance, has a 1000 euro license fee.

Regardless of the fee (I've happily paid fees for free software), the
license terms for that work appear to be non-free.

It seems, therefore, that PyPI also promotes non-free software. I would
prefer otherwise, but I don't get a vote.

> If this is OK, I think there should be an indication on such listings
> so one not interested in paying such a fee would not waste time. Or
> there should be a separate 'commercial software' section with paid
> listings.

In numerous cases, one party can distribute non-free software for a fee,
a different party can distribute the same non-free software for a much
different fee, and yet another party can distribute the same non-free
software for no fee. Again, the fee charged is orthogonal to the work's
freeness or otherwise.

I don't know if any such works actually exist yet on PyPI, but it's
clearly feasible. Given that such a work would have only one entry on
the PyPI, how (and why) would you have PyPI differentiate based on
whether some party, somewhere, charges a fee?

The license terms already have a field (“License”), and the trove
classification indicates whether the license terms are non-free
(“License :: Other/Proprietary License” in the case of the work you're
referring to). That seems enough to make the decision.

-- 
 \                   己所不欲、勿施于人。 (What is undesirable to you, |
  `\                                             do not do to others.) |
_o__)                             —孔夫子 Confucius, 551 BCE – 479 BCE |
Ben Finney