On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 17:00, John Abreau wrote: > "Jerry Feldman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > That is correct, but that would apply also to Red Hat unless they > > specifically permit it. As I mentioned, there was a question posed on their > > English listserv a month or so ago. I was not able to find the messages > > when I made a quck search. AFAIK they do not object. > > A couple years ago we had a bunch of guys from RedHat at one of our BLU > meetings, and Donnie Barnes explained that RedHat's policy is to distribute > CDs that you can freely copy without worrying about the licenses on > individual packages. I believe this was in response to a question about > why they weren't distributing KDE at the time.
Yes, I was at that meeting, and I do remember that topic. Red Hat took a lot of heat for that decision (the KDE one), and although it's all kind of moot, now, I give them a lot of credit for sticking to those principles. I've challenged people to come up with a single piece of software authored by Red Hat *proper* (i.e.: acquisitions excluded -- you don't have as much say in those circumstances) and *distributed* by Red Hat that is not GPLed (or LGPLed where appropriate). The one area some people fault them is in regarding the server side of up2date -- it's proprietary. HOWEVER, it's the service they are charging for and they haven't done anything (nor do I believe they ever will do anything) to stop the development of the Current project (http://www.biology.duke.edu/computer/unix/current/). Red Hat certainly isn't without fault, but with the possible *current* exception of Mandrake, I've yet to find a Linux distributor that's stood fast against making their distribution non-redistributable so vigilantly. (Debian doesn't count as it's not a business, though you can build a business around it. But I definitely give kudos to those developers!) I still give the others a lot of credit for their contributions, however. I just like to be able to plain *give* copies to friends and family -- after all that's why I advocate free software in the first place. I do encourage people to buy a support option however, to support the businesses based on Free Software. -- -Paul Iadonisi Senior System Administrator Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux. GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
