Digital BW, The Print

Hi there. Aside from "koloshor" here and Joseph S. Wisniewski in "real life", I'm also "wiz" on sourceforge, and have been a member of the gimp-print developer's team for many years. Now, I may well be the least productive member, I don't recall ever checking anything in that wasn't immediatly pulled out by someone with a much better idea how to make this stuff work, but hey, I'm in there...

As someone active in the free software and open source (and weird, partial overlaps of the two) communities for years, how Roy lays it down is exactly how it works.

gimp-print (and gutenprint) can be distributed exactly like Roy does. He's compiled them as standalone executables, and pipes files to them. Roys contribution is a little more than the curves, it's a stand alone program that takes an image file, applies the curves, and then pipes it to the gimp-print engine.

The GPL allows you to bundle compiled GPL'd components with commercial software that you sell. You have to at least provide pointers to where people can download the source for the GPL'd code. That's it, nothing more.

Now, if you want to see what just the free part of gimp-print will do for you, delete imagetoraster.exe from your QTR\bin directory.

There's actually a FSF foundation document titled something like "how to make money from free software". They list abotu 10 business cases. Roy's case, something that feeds data to a GPL component, is one of them. Steve's case, a GUI for a command line driven GPL'd program is also one of them. That's like the folks who wrote the shareware (commercial) GUIs PTgui and PTassembler for the popular freeware command line driven Panorama Tools. 

Ciao!

Joe

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Myron Gochnauer <goch@u...> wrote:
> This is what Roy's site says:
> 
> ******************
> The current product has two distinct parts, the print engine which is  
> based on Gimp-Print and the Quad Tone Profiling part that is solely  
> my own work. The Gimp-Print code is licensed under the GNU General  
> Public License.
> 
> The QuadTone Profile part is licensed as a Shareware product. You are  
> free to download and try the product. It is a fully operational  
> product, there are no disabled parts or dongles. If it meets your  
> needs and you want to use it for your regular workflow, please come  
> back and pay a shareware fee of fifty dollars $50. This fee can be  
> applied per user so one user can use as may printers as he/she wants,  
> or the fee can be applied per printer so one printer can be used by  
> many users. The fee will also entitle you to any bug-fix updates.  
> Profiles distributed here are included and others are free to swap  
> and distribute profiles without restriction.
> 
> **********************
> 
> The problem with Roy's description of fees is that there are *three*  
> distinct parts:
> 
>     1) Print engine (free under the GNU license)
> 
>     2) Profile utility or utilities (shareware - $50)
> 
>     3) User interface for 1 as well as 2.
> 
> Since I have no idea how to use Gimp-Print (which is on my Mac) to  
> print using any of the QTR profiles, let alone manipulate ink  
> density, etc., I paid my $50. That $50 gave me the right to use an  
> interface and set of programs to do things I could not otherwise do.  
> Even if I don't want to "roll my own" profiles, I need the  
> interface... and that's Roy's work. I don't mind paying for it.
> 
> Myron