Free, you say?

I'm confused aobut a trend in the Free Software world: subscription fees as a way of raising money for software. Specifically I've seen this with the Joomla Content Editor and JXtended Joomla! modules.

I know that there's nothing to stop people charging for Free Software. It says as much in the Selling Free Software article on the GNU web site: “Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.”.

Apparently there is no requirements about how much can be charged for Free Software, except “The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code.”.

I used to think that the source code had to be made available even if the binaries weren't. But now I think this means that you can charge what you like but the source code can then be published by the purchaser.

In which case, could I publish the above Joomla Content Editor and JXtended extensions with no fear of legal retribution?

Yours, confused of Kent