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Comment by arkameatys | Hacker News Reader

This is funny to me and maybe worth mentioning. In prison they charge inmates for this game on the tablets, is that legal? It's AccessCorrections or Access something, I know for a fact, I played it for years and now hate it because of the associations it draws for my uneuphoric recall of doing time. They also charge for Andors Trail, another open source project.

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It's legal to charge for distributions of GPL licensed projects. The OSI definition [1] specifically notes it's one of the freedoms in licenses considered open source.

Back in the mid 2000s I recall seeing drama about projects like The GIMP being repackaged and sold. While legal, the sellers exploited information asymmetry to profit from people unaware the software was available for free. The counterpoint is that distributors do work packaging the app -- maybe AccessConnections contributed some value by reviewing the content as a trusted third party.

So yeah, it's legal but might not be ethical. Open source licenses do require the source code and license to be accessible to the end user. This can be tucked away as a link in a credits screen. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm curious whether a link counts as source code distribution if you know your end users won't have unrestricted access to the Internet.

[1]: https://opensource.org/osd/

Just curious, but was it an US prison ? I have trouble seeing them allowing the prisoners to play game. Also, how are the prisoners supposed to make money to pay for the game ?

Thanks in advance.

There are paid jobs in the prison for the inmates. They are not very good, but it's a thing. You can also send funds to an inmate's commissary account, if somebody you care about is in there.

they what???? That sounds like legal racket to me. US prison industry is disgusting.

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