The GadeCon is a conference with Linux connection for the information technology community. It was organized in 2020 by the Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit organization that works to protect the Free Software Movement. One of the goals of this conference is to provide a way for software developers and users to download a Free version of their favorite applications for use at the event. In many ways, the software developers were against the idea of such a restriction as they felt they should be allowed to distribute the applications to their customers freely. But, the CD-ROMs distributed at the conference contained a free version of the application along with an invitation to download it from the event.
The Free Software Foundation was not in favor of the distribution of these CDs as it was a violation of the GPL which requires users to obtain permission before distributing copies of the software. Because the GNU General Public License permits this, they believed the CD-ROMs represented a misuse of the software. Their request to remove the CD-ROMs was refused by the organizers of the GadeCon. They believed the CD-ROMs provided a platform for distribution to visitors, thus, they would have violated the restriction if they had been allowed to distribute them. They also felt the conference was being used as a platform for promotion of specific, proprietary applications. This did not represent a valid concern to the organizers.
With GadeCon, the non-profit companies had the chance to discuss what kind of restrictions were acceptable. The software distribution requirements for the software should be set forth in the agreement between the user and the creator of the application. These guidelines should be inclusive of the freedom to redistribute. For example, in some cases, a program may be used for several products. So, the distributor of the software should be allowed to distribute it in packages in order to allow users to take advantage of all the features in the software.
