[ale] Canonical makes Apple look so good...

[Don Lachlan]

You enter a room with one exit. Written on the walls is, "Many caps
ahead. Beware."


On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Lightner, Jeff <jlightner at water.com> wrote:
> Yes but getting updates isn't easy without a fee based subscription
> service.
> You are correct though the others don't charge "license" or "royalty"
> fees.

But that's what Mark Shuttleworth *said*. If he said, "we give updates
to everyone", he would have a point. He said "every other commercial
Linux desktop is a licensed product - you can't legally use it for
free, the terms for binaries are similar to those for Windows or the
MacOS."

That's nonsense. I can use those binaries for free, under the same
license I use Ubuntu. It's _identical_. His argument is absolutely
FALSE.

Some arguments are made regarding trademarks; there is some, but very
little, validity to those arguments. There are also claims about
additional licenses; those arguments have some, but very little,
validity to them.

If I receive a copy of RHEL or SLES/SLED, I can USE and DISTRIBUTE it
as-is freely under the GPL and the GPL-compliant licenses. This
completely destroys Shuttleworth's argument.

RedHat (and Mozilla and others) get pissy if you redistribute their
trademarked names and/or graphics with modified code; I'm not aware of
a court decision supporting their argument, as it would similarly
affect the people who modify and resell cars, computers, etc. My
interpretation (IANAL) of their argument is it lacks legal weight and
they're being dicks.

To receive software updates from RedHat or Novell, I must sign a
_separate_ contract with that company (Novell allows free updates
during "eval" periods). If I receive updates from them UNDER THAT
SEPARATE CONTRACT, they may place stipulations on that contract but it
DOES NOT and CANNOT invalidate the licenses that the software was
distributed under.

IOW, if you haven't signed a contract with RedHat or Novell and you
get GPL'd software that they made, you have no additional restrictions
beyond the GPL. They may harass you to find out where you got that
software but you have not violated any license or contracts.

If you sign a support contract and you distribute GPL'd software they
give you, they may terminate your support contract or whatever are the
terms of the SEPARATE CONTRACT that you signed.

I hope this clears up some confusion about the GPL and "commercial"
GNU/Linux distributions. When was the last time ALE covered the GPL
and other F/L/OSS licenses, alongside vendor contracts?

-Lachlan

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Don
> Lachlan
> Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 2:10 AM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] Canonical makes Apple look so good...
>
> >From Mark Shuttleworth's blog posted earlier:
> "This enables us to make the desktop available in a high quality,
> fully maintained form, without any royalties or license fees. By
> contrast, every other commercial Linux desktop is a licensed product -
> you can't legally use it for free, the terms for binaries are similar
> to those for Windows or the MacOS."
>
> That's completely false. It's not even *kinda* true on any grounds.
> You can freely use or distribute RHEL or SLES or any other
> "commercial" GNU/Linux distro without fear - because it's all GPL or
> GPL-compatible.
>
> -Lachlan