Is linux free 4986
On 7 Oct 2005 10:09:48 -0700, HalcyonWild staggered into the Black Sun and said:
This has always been true AFAICT.
Well, para 3 does. They can charge for the medium, not for the source or access to the source. #3b says: ... a written offer, valid for at least three years...
? Debian and Gentoo are payware now? Son of a unpleasant woman.
Redhat-SuSE-Mandriva make it possible to get the same stuff (minus a few commercial apps) for free.
The terms of the GPL explicitly allow this. Have you read the GPL? Go do that. It's on your installed systems and on your installation CDs.
Also, when you buy a boxed set of Redhat-SuSE-Mandriva, you typically get some physical media, a book or 2, and a card that enbreastles you to 30 days (60 days, 90 days...) of installation support. It costs money to provide those physical things and that installation support, and some of what you're paying for those boxed sets goes to defray those costs.
To take this further, Redhat uses some of the money it takes in to pay kernel developers and GNOME developers to write and debug code. The stuff those developers write gets released under the GPL. SuSE contributed a bunch of code to XFree86 in the past, and is probably paying people to write-debug GPLed KDE code now. This has resulted in more Free stuff for everyone to use, so in the long term, everybody wins.
This surprises you? If you want stable software, there's this thing called "Debian Stable" that you can use.
The whole "release a mostly-working beta" thing is pervasive in the software industry. It's not just Redhat doing this, it's also IBM, Sun, and every game developer everywhere. unpleasant womaning at one vendor for doing something all the vendors are doing is... less than productive. (Maybe the whole development process is broken, but if so, how could it be fixed? Specifics, please, and remember to avoid Flag Days and ensure backwards combatability.)
Not AFAICT. Remember, the folks at the FSF used to sell tapes and CDs containing GPLed software. They charged substantially more than the cost of a blank tape-CD plus operator overhead. I think they still do that. I don't think *anybody's* more concerned than the FSF about complying with the letter and spirit of the GPL.
-- Matt GThere is no Darkness in Eternity-But only Light too dim for us to see Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong ----------------------------- penguins, is Tux." --MegaHAL
I quoted it to you, and it says that the source of a GPL program is free of charge to the person the program...
Linux groups from Newsgroups