From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Jun 28 2:57:14 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from nef.ens.fr (nef.ens.fr [129.199.96.32]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E9DB37B409 for ; Thu, 28 Jun 2001 02:57:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Rahul.Siddharthan@lpt.ens.fr) Received: from corto.lpt.ens.fr (corto.lpt.ens.fr [129.199.122.2]) by nef.ens.fr (8.10.1/1.01.28121999) with ESMTP id f5S9uvp10254 ; Thu, 28 Jun 2001 11:56:57 +0200 (CEST) Received: from (rsidd@localhost) by corto.lpt.ens.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) id LAA14934 ; Thu, 28 Jun 2001 11:58:03 +0200 (CEST) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 11:58:03 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Ted Mittelstaedt Cc: FreeBSD Advocacy Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Microsoft Message-ID: <20010628115803.G9802@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20010628111710.E9802@lpt.ens.fr> <001b01c0ffb7$2525b4a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <001b01c0ffb7$2525b4a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 02:46:03AM -0700 X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE i386 Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Ted Mittelstaedt said on Jun 28, 2001 at 02:46:03: > "...FreeBSD has traditionally been an operating system that encouraged > unencumbered experimentation. ... And that's what we're using it for. We're > using it to prove the point that you can actually implement the CLI on Unix. > It's been around a long time, people use it commercially. Microsoft uses it > commercially, actually...." > > In case you missed it he just said that Microsoft uses FreeBSD commercially. > "it" > in this context refers to FreeBSD, not CLI. I think they mean things like Hotmail. Or maybe they borrowed some stuff for Win2K... > >Incidentally, recent moves by Caldera seem to suggest that per-seat > >licensing of a "prettified" distribution is not incompatible with > >linux either. This week's lwn.net editorial takes a surprisingly > >positive stance on this. > > It never has been incompatible. Nothing in the GPL prevents people from > charging for the source - but they must make any source touched by GPL > available for free. Obviously when you do this you can't charge much for > it. The GPL is not incompatible with selling a boxed distribution, but it is incompatible with a "per seat" license. You can sell it to A, but you can't stop A from further redistributing it, or insist that it can be installed only on one machine (or used only by one user). > In Caldera's case they most likely haven't released all their "prettified" > code under GPL, thus they don't have to redistribute that, and thus they can > charge higher prices for the distribution that includes the pretty code. The lwn.net report suggests that their distribution includes third-party commercial software, which is why the distribution as a whole cannot be freely distributed and a per-seat license is possible. They had released their installer under an open-source (I think GPL) license: I don't know whether that has now changed. You are still free to yank out any GPL-covered components of their distribution and redistribute those separately... R To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message