I had a dinner with Bob Young and it came from the horses mouth that
RedHat actually promotes copying of their CDs, since all the software
in it (including all the scripts written by the RHAD labs) is open
source and released with no restrictions on copying so long as it
carries the original notification. Infact, in one of the local demos
in Singapore last year, our folks had distributed around 600
*copied* CDs of RH 5.2; all with the blessings of RH.
The same applies to Slackware and Debian too.
However, not SuSE. This is because YaST is released under a
copyright from SuSE which forbids you from copying it. Thus
although all the rest of the stuff in the CD can be copied, this
single piece of muck screws it all.
IGNATIUS NAYAN D'ROZARIO writes:
> As a rejoinder to my earlier post, I realized I have a few more queries...
>
> Although Linux itself is open source and freely distributable, what about
> the distros ? If someone copies the CDs of any given commercially available
> Distro is he/she/it committing an act of software piracy. Now this may SEEM
> rather paradoxical but what does the legal agreement which accompanies the
> distros actually say ? Can anyone clarify this point ? This would assume
> significance in the event that ILUG Cal setup it own library/pool of the
> more popular distros for circulation among our members as copies ( since I
> am SURE the owners of the originals would like to cherish them in pristine
> state ! ) and later even a wider community of PC users to popularize Linux
> in our City.
>
--
Amlan Saha [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cwc.nus.edu.sg/~cwcamlan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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