Anil wrote:
CDIT has distributed copies of RH9 to state IT mission.
If CDIT, which appears to be a not-for-profit organisation, did the distribution free of charge, or without profit, then none can have any cause to complain, because the RedHat license guidelines clearly say:
<quote> We consider non-commercial redistribution to be any distribution for which you charge no more than the cost of replicating the CD and a reasonable handling fee. If any copies are to be distributed to individuals outside your organization, either the label or an accompanying printed document must indicate that: (a) the distribution is provided without any warranties (unless you elect to provide those warranties); and (b) this distribution does not include support (either technical or developer) services from Red Hat but that such services may be purchased from Red Hat separately. </quote>
Could Anil clarify if CDIT complied with these formalities? If yes then, the whole controversy appears to be based on rumours rather than on facts. The spirit of the free software movement aims to enable sharing and if a state comes forward with initiatives to promote use of free software, it should be appreciated and welcomed, particularly when it appears to be as lawful as it could be. As Anil suspects, the reasons for the mischievous propaganda against use of free software should be available soon.
Returning to another thread, at the start of this month, I had written about Free Software CD's (Clean Distributions), stressing the need to create distributions based on Knoppix, and compiling software from the sources. Rishi Gangoly showed interest, and recently RMS pointed to people working in this direction. FreeBSD developers are also excited about bootable FreeBSDCDR's, and lot of activity is proceeding in this direction to enable simple custom distributions. It would be ideal if a state could release its own custom distribution, to suit its purposes, without relying on any commercial packages for spreading the use of free software in the state.
Promoting free software with other distributions like Debian, Knoppix or FreeBSD should be less cumbersome. But, the ideal choice is to create one's own free software distribution.
References: http://www.akshaya.net