[Ale-study] Testing testing... this thing on?

[DJ-Pfulio]

Thanks Scott.

I never understood the free speech/free beer comparison either, beyond
thinking that I like both free speech AND free beer.  Having gotten some
nasty beer-like liquids from Blue Moon recently, I probably need to
change that statement. to include "good, free, beer."  ;)

Also, it is perfectly legal to charge a "nominal fee" for GPL software
to offset the production/distribution costs. Back in the early 1990s, it
was common to pay $10-$35 for a CDROM full of GPL software. 9600baud
just wasn't THAT fast. I'd get the Walnut Creek 6-Disc Linux from
Microcenter every 6-9 months for $16 to stay current. It was a different
world back then - pre-package manager - at least my slackware distros
didn't use a package manager.  tgz baby.


On 01/26/2017 11:52 AM, Scott M. Jones wrote:
> The word "free" means two different things in the open source sense.  It
> means freedom or liberty, but can also mean price of $0.00.
> 
> "Free as in speech" refers to freedom or liberty.
> 
> "Free as in beer" refers to price of $0.00 for the actual product
> (regardless of recipe).
> 
> The open source community is often complaining about too much emphasis
> on price of $0.00 and not enough emphasis on freedom or liberty.  Having
> source code available for the entire operating system, and a
> modification-friendly license, means that you can customize anything any
> way that you want to, and this is really the power of open source,
> regardless of what you paid or didn't pay for it.
> 
> Linux is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) which comes
> from the "Free Software Foundation", and the name "Free" in this
> foundation definitely refers to freedom and/or liberty rather than price
> of the product.  Look up the history of Richard Stallman for more
> information on this topic.  (Also the term "copyleft" is sometimes used
> ironically to indicate that the GPL doesn't technically provide 100%
> freedom, not as much as public domain licensing would.)
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> -Scott
> 
> P.S. It appears JD is referring to the document 101-LPIC-1-admin-en.pdf
> which can be downloaded via this command in your local copy of Linux
> that you should now have running for class:
> 
> wget -rnd http://lpi.jdpfu.com/
> 
> The getent command appears on page 32 of this document.  So you should
> read up through page 32.
> 
> 
> On 1/26/17 9:09 AM, H P Ladds wrote:
>> Thanks, things have been silent here, and I wasn't sure that I was
>> signed-up correctly. So I "pinged" the list?
>>
>> I'm uncertain of what I should be studying right now? I'm reading the
>> "Introduction to Linux
>> for Users and Administrators." Anyone know what will we cover in the
>> next class?  
>>
>> Also, I don't understand the saying that OS software is "Free as in
>> speech, not as in beer." Is beer free in Helsinki? Isn't open source
>> software and brewing beer more analogous than free speech? Beer is
>> brewed: It has a recipe, a brewing process and a finished product.
>> Similarly, software is compiled: It has code, a compiling process, and a
>> finished binary. 
>>
>> What you do with that the recipe and the beer is up to your discretion.
>> You can give the beer away or charge for it. You can give the recipe
>> away or charge for it. People can change and alter your recipe... Etc.
>> So too with code and software.   
>>
>> Freedom of speech is an altogether different topic.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Preston 
> 
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