Fwd: Possible GPL violation by Red Hat/Dell alliance

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On Saturday 14 December 2002 01:12 pm, Nathan Meyers wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 12:33:57PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
> And compiling, selling, and supporting binaries is at the dead-center of
> open source business models pushed by the likes of Eric Raymond - and,
> for that matter, by GPL purists like RMS. Whoa... is RedHat guilty of
> taking those business models seriously?

That is false, and is in fact the biggest area in which RMS and ESR disagree.  
RMS (and, by extention, the FSF), is really against charging for software.  
Period.  He has slipped a little in the last year or so, but that has almost 
always been his position.  Free as in Beer is just as important as Free as in 
Speech.  I have heard it from his lips personally.

It is also against the GPL to not distribute, or make available, the source 
code for any product that has GPL code in it, including the source code for 
the non-GPL'ed parts.  This is the silver bullet that keeps just barely 
missing M$FT.  Making money off of distributing GPL software is not agains 
the GPL though.

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DDDD   David Kramer         david at thekramers.net       http://thekramers.net
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