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

[Jai Harrison]

What if I did not have an e-mail address available to me? It seems in
that case my right to access the source would have been withdrawn from
me.

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 10:35 PM,  <matt at mattjones.me.uk> wrote:
> Quoting Jai Harrison <jai at jaiharrison.com>:
>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
>>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
>>> https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/
>>>
>>
>> --
>> ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
>> https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/
>>
>
> IANAL, but I think that the GPL requires people who want the source to
> be given access to it. You have gained access to it, and although this
> is not as 'open' as putting it up for download straight off the site,
> the source has been given to you.
>
> I would not be surprised if it does include some proprietary bits, the
> EEE for example has a relatively large amount of proprietary stuff
> built into the os.
>
>
> --
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> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
> https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/
>