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From: o r c @ p e l l . c h i . i l . u s (david parsons)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.admin
Subject: Re: Linux, Bsd Against NT bullshit
Date: 23 Jan 1997 21:43:14 -0800
Organization: The International Queer Conspiracy
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <5c9i5i$fu@pell.pell.chi.il.us>
References: <5c08da$r2t@nntp1.best.com> <5c30ac$9v1@web.nmti.com> <5c7gfp$qos@pell.pell.chi.il.us> <5c8jtf$57d@cynic.portal.ca>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pell.pell.chi.il.us
X-Reply-To: orc@pell.chi.il.us
Comment: email address space-expanded to deter spam.
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.misc:2002
In article <5c8jtf$57d@cynic.portal.ca>,
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.portal.ca> wrote:
>In article <5c7gfp$qos@pell.pell.chi.il.us>,
>david parsons <o r c @ p e l l . c h i . i l . u s> wrote:
>>
>>>[1] Ironically, most of the Linux distributions include restricted tools
>>>and tools for which the source isn't available,
>>
>> Which distributions were those again? The wire gods et the list of
>> distributions that contain stuff without source being available.
>
>Red Hat/Alpha, for just one.
What stuff without source is on Red Hat/Alpha?
I know that Red Hat bundles a couple of commercial items with their
`official' distribution, but I thought that was merely for the i386
version, and from what I've heard from other vendors the official
with-bundled-commercial-software RedHat is not the only one out there
and isn't even the one that sells the most copies (not surprising,
since the other ones don't involve royalty.)
I've got a copy of a fairly recent Red Hat distribution (a comp copy
because I wrote the date parsing code for the at program in FreeBSD
and Linux) and from peering around in it I don't see offhand what
essential stuff doesn't come without source, so I'm officially
confused. Yes, there is nonfree value added stuff in this commercial
distribution, but if it wasn't there you'd still have a working system
(with, apparently, source for everything except one stupid binary
graphics library demo) that other vendors package up and sell. I
can't really interpret this in any meaningful way (if some vendor
bundled FreeBSD with the excellent Xinside X server, would that then
apply the same taint to that OS?) because I've been using a fairly
recent copy of a different Linux distribution as the baseline code for
a commercial product I've designed and have never come up against a
restriction other than the GPL (which in actual fact proves to be no
restriction at all; CD-Roms are indeed your friend when you need to
either package 70mb of code or provide an ftp site until the sun
grows cold.) except in code that I had adapted several years earlier
(from mgetty) and then had to back out because it has a gimme
license :-(
____
david parsons \bi/ orc@pell.chi.il.us
\/