Arun M said on Thu, Dec 25, 2003 at 05:04:02PM +0530,:
BTW, the reporter of India Express seems to be anti-free software guy. It is not the first time he is making a report which can hurt free software movement.
That should not distract us from a valid criticism when it is raised. When people fail to distinguish between free and non-free software on a CD, the re-distributor should be extra careful on what he is distributing.
Again, how will CDIT/Akshya comply with requirements of GPL regarding making source code available for 3 years?? RH makes several modifications to the sources released by upstream authors.
For example, AFAIK, the apache server is seriously modified by RH that the binary is called something else (httpd??), not Apache. (Got this info from a mailing list of someother distro; so I might be wrong here).
Will C-DIT/Akshya make available the sources 3 years down the line? I am sure that RH has not given C-DIT/Akshya any written undertaking as envisaged in the GPL. So, if any of the receipients of the Akshya CD demands sources, will the project be able to comply??
Please, I am not arguing with anybody or for or against anything.
I am just pointing out the possibility of other people who, like the reporter of NIE, are anti-free software. Some people can be influenced to become pawns and be used to put the project's use of GNU/Linux in jeopardy. This is a situation we need to guard against.
I recall a long, unpleasant and dreary thread with the maker of the Knoppix distro. The complaint against him was that he was putting sources to his changes alone on his site; not the entire sources as modified by him. People can get real nasty sometimes.