usage of "Free" in RHEL article [LWN.net]

From:		Colin Walters <walters-AT-verbum.org>
To:		lwn-AT-lwn.net
Subject:		usage of "Free" in RHEL article
Date:		Thu, 05 Feb 2004 02:54:18 -0500

Hi,

Most of the people in the free software and open source community will
use the capitalized word "Free" to emphasize that one is talking about
freedom over price, since the two words are the same in English.

The recent article about RHEL is entitled "Substituting RHEL with Free
Alternatives". I realize that it is normal journalistic practice to
capitalize words in a title. However, given that RHEL *is* Free
Software, I think it would have been better to recognize that most of
alternatives are actually just no-cost; i.e. "free".

And given that the article points out that several of these alternatives
aren't actually no-cost, it seems to me a much better title for the
article would simply have been something like "RHEL Alternatives", or
"Looking at RHEL Alternatives".

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usage of "Free" in RHEL article

Posted Feb 14, 2004 1:47 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

I beg to differ.

The softwares making up RHEL are free softwares, that is not disputed.

Whether RHEL as a distribution qualify for "free" remains to be seen.
The most basic test of freedom and the first to apply is whether you can
redistribute _verbatim_ copies. As far as I understand, Red Hat try to
scare away people from distributing verbatim copies of the set or RPMs
that made up RHEL by using trademark law.

I say _scare away_ because it is not clear if all the licenses of software
they distribute allow that. GPL clause 7 come to mind. It is also unclear
if trademark law is applicable.

Of course I agree with you that proposing alternatives that are no more
free than RHEL don't do any good.

[I have no special grudge against RH. They have a clearer free software
policy than most other commercial distros, but the question of the freedom
of RHEL remain.]