Submitted by John Locke on

Hah! You gotta love this one: It Pays To Read License Agreements. PC Pitstop put a little clause in their software license agreement, saying to contact them for financial compensation for reading that far. Their software was downloaded over 3,000 times over 4 months before somebody contacted them. The guy got a check for $1,000!

What does this have to do with Open Source? Everything. Read the fine print of the GPL, or just about any other open source license. Then read the fine print of your typical proprietary application. Don't know about you, but when I finish reading the open source license, I have a smile on my face and am grateful to the original developers. When I finish reading the typical proprietary license, I'm typically pissed off, exhausted, and feeling trapped.

Try it for yourself and see! And leave a comment below.

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