Dear Friends: I would like to inform you about CD-ROM release entitled LinuxHOWTO + Software (see http://http://www.m-and-s.com/files/HOWTO_CD.html ) ======================== Why did I produce it? There are several reasons. 1. My way of doing some type of contracts for WinNT based companies: a. Make development of all the software and all the pilot projects on UNIX machine (in particular on Linux)- 70% of working time. b. Port the results to the platform required by customer and produce documentation-30% of working hours. It worked for me in most of the situations. All the time I used LinuxHOWTO posted at http://lagrange.la.asu.edu/VirtualClass/LinuxOnline/index.html But I needed all the time to download the software as soon as I was done with reading LinuxHOWTO. For this reason I find useful to put all this stuff on a single CD-ROM and carry it to my clients when I asked to do something instead of browsing the Internet. Of course, my choice of software is subjective - it is the basic of what you need when doing a contract. 2. I wanted always to pay back to Linux and GNU developers for what they did for me creating such wonderful development tools. My idea is to give back to the developers and LinuxHOWTO authors 80% of the profit from this CD-ROM. I hope it will help to promote further creation and improving Linux OS. ================== DISTRIBUTION POLICY ------------------- All items of this CDROM if not otherwise stated can be redistributed under GPL license (see file docs/GPL on the CDROM) from Free Software Foundation, Inc. You are encouraged to resell and redistribute this CDROM under the following terms regulating the distribution of your profit: 1. You have to pay fee equal to %10 percent of your profit to M&S Group Inc. 2. You have to pay other %10 of your profit to the authors of LinuxHOWTO documents. 3. You have to pay other %20 of your profit to Linux kernel developers. 4. You have to pay other %20 of your profit to developers of other software included in the CDROM distribution. 5. You have to pay other %20 of your profit to Free Software Foundation, Inc. =============================================================================== How to make these payments? --------------------------- There are two possibilities: 1. First you can contact the authors yourself and make payments directly. You can choose yourself policy of payments and distribution of mentioned above percentage of the profit among authors. It can be distributed uniformly (in equal parts) or you might want to sponsor activity of some particular authors or developers. 2. You can transfer the necessary percentage of your profit to M&S Group Inc. and authorize M&S Group Inc. to execute stated above DISTRIBUTION POLICY. =============================================================================== How to order? ------------- Send check to the address M&S Group Inc. 1038 E Brentrup Dr. AZ 85283 and make check payable to M&S Group Inc. Do not forget to attach your return address to the check (if it is different from the address printed on the check) and write on the check LinuxHOWTO+Software. The price for the CD-ROM is $10 + shipping shipping $6 inside USA $7.50 - Europe $8.50 - Asia and Africa $9.25 - Pacific Rim If you want to spend more than $10 on this CDROM, than you need to attach information on how I need to invest this funds in Linux development. With best ++++++++++++++++++++++++, Sergey P.S. Information about Linux JDK development (at least the part which was done by me): in general Linux JDK porting project (in M&S Group ) is blown up by the policies of Sun Microsystems Inc. I do not have resources to carry it over to the commercial level, but as time permits I continue to support educational releases of Linux JDK. I start thinking over the possibility of creating corba-type client/server development platform for Linux as a reasonable GPL alternative to Java. In this line of development you can write your client server application in any language you want and corba broker will do the rest to carry it over the Internet. If somebody wants to participate in this development process, you are welcome, but believe me it is pane in the neck - 24 hours a day (and nobody knows whether your work will be reworded some day).
