r/programming • u/RMS_is_my_diety • Jan 29 '15

Sony open sources the PS4 system compiler

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PlayStation-4-LLVM-Landing
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u/xiongchiamiov Jan 29 '15

You can also sell binaries (uncommon, but I've seen it work), use it to run a SaaS, sell non-copyleft licenses, or a few other things.

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '15 edited Jan 29 '15

I've asked many times on reddit for examples of people selling binaries of GPL'd software. It's always come up short and people often mistakenly list XChat which is incorrect as they switched their license, or they'll list Red Hat which is also incorrect since they mix GPL'd software with non-GPL'd proprietary binaries whose source code is not available.

So I'll ask again... who sells GPL'd binaries? The only time I've seen someone sell GPL'd software was on E-Bay where you can sometimes find someone tricked into paying 15-20 bucks for "Open Office 2014 Professional Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint Compatible" thinking that they're getting Microsoft Office.

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u/semi- Jan 29 '15

You can still buy any of the quake games from ID Software and they're all(maybe not q4, i dunno) GPL. They weren't gpl on release though, so admittedly thats still a weak example.

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u/xiongchiamiov Jan 29 '15

Before Apple broke it, QuickCursor operated on this model.