Hi Guy,
I disagree the ethical point is that they are intending to profit
on the intellectual property/creativatity of the developers who have
contributed to the development of "their" distribution.
Then limit the distribution of this "recognisable" content.
As any one in business knows the more exposure your product
recieves the better for your business:
If as a business you seek to limit that brand exposure you would
only do this to maintain or increase profits:
Therefore the intention is just to control the marketing of the profit
and increase profits (in my opinion). this would seem to imply that
the company feels it can afford to loose the goodwill of the Linux
user/developers community as their code/software base is now
solid enough to build a non distributable (propriety we sell it only
distribution).
checking the MD5 sum will verifiy the content:
> Somehow I think people are getting a bit precious over this. I am going to
> side with RedHat.
>
> Redhat admit that they have no problem in people distributing the software.
> What they object to is people distributing software and calling it RedHat.
> For all they know, the cd's distributed under the name RedHat may have
> content that differs from the official RedHat distributions. Someone could
> download Redhat 9, make some minor changes and redistribute it, still under
> the name RedHat. The resultant distribution may be a load of sh#t. (this is
> not an invitation for people to say that the orignial rh 9 is anyway).
> Redhat have a legitimate right to control what software is distributed
> under their name.
>
>
> Guy Steven
>
> Wanaka Law
> P O Box 161
> Wanaka
> Ph +64 03 443 8286, fax +64 03 4438779
> Principal: Chris Steven.
