OpenOffice CDs live for lending in Scottish libraries (Register) [LWN.net]

OpenOffice CDs live for lending in Scottish libraries (Register)

Posted Dec 19, 2003 9:22 UTC (Fri) by beejaybee (guest, #1581)
Parent article: OpenOffice CDs live for lending in Scottish libraries (Register)

I don't get the point here. Where does the "kiosk" get the images from if not from the 'Net? Why do they trust source A rather than source B?

If what it takes is an "official" distribution in a cardboard box containing a printed licence and a master CD which can be snail-mailed to libraries from an "official office", then I'm sure that the bigger projects like OOo would find it worthwhile to do that. The unit cost would be small, and the libraries would very probably feel much more cosy if they did have to pay the cost of production & postage. Which is most definitely legal even under GPL.

Producing copies of CDs to give away (or sell at production cost) to "customers" (can't really call them borrowers!) is of course trivial given a typical office or consumer PC with a CD writer drive. Doesn't even matter if the PC used to "stamp out copies" is running a completely different OS to that required to run the software.

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