Hi Owen, all,

Owen Brazell wrote:

> I am not sure if Bill means Guide 9 is free to be distributed that way.

It is indeed free to be distributed in that way. If you're familiar
at all with Linux and the way in which it is distributed... well, that's
what we'll be looking at here; like Linux, Guide 9 will be licensed
under the GPL. As Arturo and others have suggested, this has a lot of
interesting consequences.

It means you can buy a copy, then install it on a zillion machines.
You can get it a copy and then install it on all the machines at your
local school... which you may want to consider doing. Although Guide
is (at least at present) perhaps not really suited to teaching astronomy
to younger kids!

It also means that you'll have the source code, and (if you're a C
and C++ programmer) can alter it for your own purposes. I've hopes that
some people will take advantage of that fact, and will come up with some
great improvements I've either not thought of, or just haven't had the
time to do. (Perhaps make a version suitable to younger kids?)

And as you're probably thinking, it does mean that I almost certainly
won't sell as many copies as would otherwise happen. I'm not totally
happy about that, of course! But I've weighed the advantages and
drawbacks of this move quite a bit over the last year or two, and
finally decided this was the way to go.

-- Bill