Is linux free 4990

Saying "we" when you mean "you" is not particularly open ;)!. There is certainly nothing to argue about in terms of facts or interpretation and the only thing I can find to demur at in what you said is that you call A "not for free" (paraphrasing) when the price of A+P&P is x, and the price of P&P is x. I don't find that label appropriate in those circumstances, and you do.

I'm trying to see your point - I'm not blowing a gasket trying, but I am making an attempt - but the logic above gets in the way for me.

As far as I recall your point and your motives, you are trying to disabuse some person of the notion that SuSE, RH, etc. should provide him with an ISO image of their distro (or the GPL parts) sitting there for him to download. We agree that there is no requirement at all for them to do that, and nowhere in the GPL does it say that they should, and the person is a lazy ungrateful weak-minded pratt with the atbreastude of a brat if he persists in whining that they SHOULD.

Quite the contrary .. it says in the GPL that SuSE, RH. have to make available the source ("A"), not the programs, for the cost of A+P&P (interpreting P&P as standing for what it says is allowable to charge in the GPL #3b).

And they don't even have to that. They can gesture in the direction of the place they got their source from, and say "get it from there" (GPL #3c). A list of the references will do.

And they don't even have to do that. They can simply provide the source of the GPL programs on the same cds simply ONLY to the persons who actually bought the distro cd (GPL #3a), under whatever conditions were attached to that.

But all that simply means that linux is FREE, in the sense of liberty - people who buy linux get the source and hence the freedom to modify it to fix things they don't like or improve it to fit their needs. That's what RS intended.

Peter