On Tuesday 10 May 2005 20:27, Abhishek Daga wrote:
--- sherlock@vsnl.com wrote:
I am absolutely sure of the above. However IANAL. So take a legal opinion from two lawyers together a copyright expert and a contract expert if you plan on tangling legally with RH or Suse or whoever. If you are planning a bussiness by placing restrictions on the recipient, perish the thought.
Final word. If the original code is gpld, you can copy and distribute the code and the binary to your hearts content - contract or no contract.
Thank you. great insights.
a) As far as placing restrictions on the recipients.. Well, not that I would, but if I could, wouldnt that be so cool?
It would not. Apart from the moral and legal issues it is a pain to maintain upgrades to your code given the everchanging hardware and software environment. A case in point M$ lifted the bsd tcpip stack and yet their closed version has far more security flaws a few yrs later than a newer bsd and linux stack. quite obviously they do not have the resources to foldback new developments from bsd into their own stuff or the ie exploder which was also based on a NCSA rendering engine (afaik).
b) Not planning to tangle with Suse or RH, but am wondering, whether I need to "buy" 40 licences or subscriptions to RHEL or SuSe when I could buy 1 and load on all. How would it affect my working. Would I be breaking the law in any form and can anyone kick my butt for it.
They can stop you from accessing their upgrade services. That is all. In any case imo you are better off with Debian if you are not using RH's / Suse's services. Using their services allows you to concentrate on your bussiness instead of worrying about a million different things. It also helps a lot in pointing a finger when things go wrong (with GNU/Linux hardly ever).
Since an "activation" is required, would i be able to start it at all?
No idea at all.
Not that RHI has shown any interest in making me a paid customer despite a couple of requests. I guess business must already be super for them which in turn means Open Source is already quite happening on a commercial scale. go RH.
GNU/Linux is definetly a very happening place I assure you. Particularly in organizations with poor IT setups. And there are many such with 300 up pcs and a handful of servers. Why should RH be bothered with 40 machines, when the same effort can rake in the cash for 400. Which is why Linux on the home user desktop has not caught on as much as it should - it does not make commercial sense.
rgds jtd