Thanks for the links. So I wonder if you could charge for cloning a repo in Github. You know put your code there, but git clone (or fork) doesn't work unless you feed it a onetime key, so you goto Github, "buy" your key, then pass it into your git command line
git clone --token=0x1515151 <repospec>
and git allows the clone to happen and tags it with the clone token. No token and you don't get to get a copy of the source.
If that would work it would be an interesting way of selling your software.
Well, that would require github making some changes server-side, but it seems like an entirely reasonable thing to do. You can browse the source, but you can't really download it until you pay.
There's no reason why free software should just be given away. The point is to make sure users have the source code and the permission to modify it and redistribute it. It was never to make sure they don't have to pay in order to acquire the software.
Sure, if they can redistribute it, perhaps they could undercut you, but if we believe that piracy doesn't really hurt sales that badly, it seems likely that this secondary moneyless distribution might not substantially hurt the primary one.
If that would work it would be an interesting way of selling your software.