[ubuntu-uk] Linux to appear on every Asus motherboard

[Jai Harrison]

I'm having trouble identifying if this is free software or not.

I took a look on Wikipedia and it stated that it is a "proprietary
model", whatever that means. Then I took a look at the website and it
requires you to provide them with personal details to be sent a link,
by e-mail, to the source.

The Wikipedia article seems to link to an e-mailed ID access to the
source. So I downloaded the source that is provided but my poor
programming experience means I was unable to identify if it is
complete or not.

One thing I would note is that the software is covered by the GPL
license yet they require you to provide them with an e-mail address to
be given access to it.

Motherboards have been sold with this software on, right? If that's
the case then surely this is a violation of the GPL.

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 8:06 PM, Rob Beard <rob at esdelle.co.uk> wrote:
> Chris Rowson wrote:
>> I know many of you probably read Slashdot, but just in case you missed
>> it, what do you think of this news? Basically, Asus are going to have
>> a Linux desktop pre-installed onto a chip on every motherboard they
>> sell.
>>
>> http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/14/173220
>>
>> ""We first heard about Splashtop back in October, when the instant-on
>> Linux desktop was announced. At the time it was a really exciting
>> concept but Asus only rolled out the technology on high-end
>> motherboards. Splashtop just announced that Asus will be expanding the
>> desktop to the P5Q motherboard family and later on to all Asus
>> motherboards. That's embedded Linux shipping over over a million
>> motherboards a month! The release also mentioned that the technology
>> will be appearing on notebooks this year as well."
>>
>> Good eh?
>>
>> Chris
>>
>
> That's good news.  I heard bits about this when I was looking for an
> upgrade earlier on this year, unfortanately it didn't cover the mid
> range boards I was looking at.
>
> Still, sounds promising.
>
> Rob
>
>
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