On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 21:10 +1300, Richard Tindall wrote: > For Lyndsay: there are Debian(-based) OS's, and there are other OS's > (imho). >
which ones do you use Rik? > So you're correct. There's just Gnu(GPL'd)/Linux, and > Gnu(GPL'd)/Linux. > (And BSD.) Linux is released under the GPL but it is not GNU software. The balance of the software in distros is released under many licenses. Some of it is GNU software, and under the GPL. As I understand it if you want your software to come under the GNU umbrella you must assign your copyright to the Free Software Foundation Some of it is under the GPL but not GNU software. Some of it is open sourced under other licences, examples of which are the mozilla public license, in fact too many to name. xorg-x11 lists all of these licenses: "Adobe-X CID DEC DEC-2 IBM-X NVIDIA-X NetBSD SGI UCB-LBL XC-2 bigelow-holmes-urw-gmbh-luxi christopher-g-demetriou national-semiconductor nokia tektronix the-open-group todd-c-miller x-truetype xfree86-1.0 MIT SGI-B BSD || ( FTL GPL-2" Some is not open sourced at all, or under "free" but not "free" licenses. The BSD license is a quite different to the GPL, it doesn't require release back to the community or distribution of modified sources - you only have to credit the BSD crowd. Hence there is reputedlty (or maybe was) BSD networking code in some versions of windows. I suspect it would be possible (but bloody difficult and largely pointless except as an academic exercise) to run linux without GNU software. > -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
