John Summerfield wrote:
Please, take care with your language. "public domain" means that I can
take it, change it, copyright it, not reveal my changes etc.
Yes, you are right. I keep getting the variety of terms mixed up. Public
Domain isn't the same as "GNU" (is it?). And it seems like there is a
third type (or perhaps just another term that is the same as a previous
term).
Tom Duerbusch
THD Consulting
Essentially, public domain software is unowned: its author has renounced
his rights to it.
In contrast, all Red Hat software, and most software in any Linux
distribution is copyright and you may only use it within the terms of
the relevant licence.
I can take the configuration tools from Red Hat Linux and use them on my
Debian system, and that's precisely what Klaus Knopper did in creating
Knoppix: the reason it's so good at configuring itself is that it uses
Red Hat software.
Red Hat retains its rights over those tools, and tou may only use them
under the terms of the licence Red Hat uses. Klaus cannot change that:
indeed, he is required to provide source code to his versions (and does
so).
If those tools were public domain, Klaus could claim copyright over his
modified versions, and could exercise sole control over their use.
SuSE wrote Yast, and retains its rights as author of the software.
Unlike Red Hat, it does not licence its software under the terms of the
GPL, and I cannot take Yast and adapt it to work with Debian Linux.
OTOH, last time I looked, I _could_ redistribute Yast, but only with
SuSE Linux. Probably, that forbids me from taking SuSE Linux and
changing it in any way, even so minor a way as adding a package or
recompiling software with different optimisations, and redistributing
the results with Yast.
--
Cheers
John.
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