Trading Standards get in a tizz over free software

(Via BoingBoing). It seems that the concept of giving away software and, shock! horror!, allowing other people to package that software up and then sell it on, was a bit too much for one Trading Standards officer…

A little while ago, I received an e-mail from a lady in the Trading Standards department of a large northern town. They had encountered businesses which were selling copies of Firefox, and wanted to confirm that this was in violation of our licence agreements before taking action against them. I wrote back, politely explaining the principles of copyleft