Fred wrote:
NOT open source they can't....NOT the software its self. He can charge
for including OO softwear on the sytems, setup, support, etc.
One of the constraints of FLOSS is that there are no restrictions on how
one may profit from it:
* If you can make a buck selling it, you may do so;
* If you can make a buck providing support for it, you may do so;
* If you can make a buck giving it away, you can do so;
* If you can make a buck writing code for it, you may do so;
* If you can make a buck pitching you, you may do so;
* If you can make a buck disparaging it, you may do so;
The _only_ issue Roger Wu and his company may run into, in providing
OOo/Firefox/Thunderbird/etc, is that doing so violates their OEM
contract with Microsoft. I don't know what the current OEM contract
looks like, but in the past the contract has included such gems as:
* For every system shipped that does not contain a Microsoft Operating
System, you will pay Microsoft $100 plus the amount of a Microsoft
Operating System;
* If more than 5% of your shipped systems do not contain Microsoft
Office, You will pay a $150 per system, until less then 1% of your
systems include Microsoft Office;
* If you ship more than a specific percentage of systems that do not
contain a Microsoft operating system, your OEM licence will be cancelled
and all systems you shipped shall be deemed to be "pirated software";
Microsoft has continually shown that it doesn't care what government
regulations are, it will throw its weight around, and the 500000 Euros
per day fine is meaningless. [To be effective, that fine should be at
least $5^10 per day, or have a retroactive change of licence that all
software released by Microsoft, its partners, its affiliates, and its
subsidiaries since 1978, be relicensed under the GNU GPL;
xan
jonathon
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