Weekly edition	Kernel	Security	Distributions	Contact Us	Search
Archives	Calendar	Subscribe	Write for LWN	LWN.net FAQ	Sponsors

Linux & MS "mainstream", not Apple?

Posted Aug 13, 2004 12:12 UTC (Fri) by stumbles (guest, #8796)
In reply to: Linux & MS "mainstream", not Apple? by ibukanov
Parent article: China's OSS alliance is founded to withstand Microsoft (China Economic Net)

I am not aware of any major Linux distribution that can be "pirated".

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Aug 13, 2004 13:17 UTC (Fri) by petebull (guest, #7857) [Link]

SuSE releases had non-free software in it, and only SuSE got permission
to redistribute the products from the propietary software writers.

And were there not Mandrake releases that were available only to the
Mandrake Club subscribers for a period of time?

And while you could reproduce RedHat CD-sets you were not allowed to
reproduce the artwork because of trademark policy.

Can you come up with another major (in my sense: profit motivated)
distribution?

I don't know anything of Connectivas distribution.

Any errors I made above are mine, so please report them with the reply
function ;)

Linux & MS "mainstream", not Apple?

Posted Aug 13, 2004 15:18 UTC (Fri) by QuisUtDeus (guest, #14854) [Link]

Of course, these was/is Caldera... (*ducks quickly*)

Linux & MS "mainstream", not Apple?

Posted Aug 13, 2004 19:26 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

You guessed it. Caldera Linux is what you'll find next to Windows XP and Adobe Photoshop on Russian CD bazaars.

Linux & MS "mainstream", not Apple?

Posted Aug 13, 2004 22:52 UTC (Fri) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

To comply with GPL any distributor must either include the source or provide written guaranty that he will provide the source upon request for 3 years. It is not enough to simply point to the software author web site. http://busybox.net/license.html summarize that nicely.

So technically any binary Linux CD sold without such guarantor is a violation of copyright laws. Linux "resellers" I saw in Moscow or Minsk almost never have source CDs and I guess they do not include any written offers either ;)