Alex Hewitt USG said:
>I think that the business of putting a copyright on top of a collection of
>software where individual projects are copyrighted under GPL is pretty
>confusing. I would avoid copying Red Hat's CD because I honestly can't
say tha
>t
>it would be completely legal. Either that or visit Red Hat's web page
where th
>ey
>provide a link to a downloadable copy or perhaps visit www.linuxiso.org
and
>get the ISO images from there.
>
>I find it odd that they put a copyright notice on their CDs and then give
a li
>nk
>to the .iso image files. I'd guess that since they're certainly in the
busines
>s
>to make money, they would like users to buy the official distribution and
>hopefully buy support. Support costs would rapidly outstrip whatever
profits
>they make on their distributions if the user really uses it though...
Something to understand - under Copyright law, they automatically have
copyright (just as you do to something you produce). Doesn't matter
whether they state it or not. What the copyright statement does is allow
them to more strictly enforce any copyright violations. So, whether they
included copyright notice or not, you would still be required to determine
whether or not they had licensed the code under GPL, etc.
Contrary to belief, GPL does NOT equal Public Domain. Linux is fully
copyrighted Linus et al. However, they have added a license (GPL) that
grants some privileges NOT granted under copyright (i.e. redistribution of
original & derived works). All work is either PD or copyrighted. PD work
you can literally do anything you want with.
jeff
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Jeffry Smith Technical Sales Consultant Mission Critical Linux
[EMAIL PROTECTED] phone:603.930.9739 fax:978.446.9470
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Thought for today: firmy /fer'mee/ n.
Syn. stiffy (a 3.5-inch floppy
disk).
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