Agreeing to licenses - WAS: Bye to Unbuntu

Anthony M Simonelli a.simonelli at sbcglobal.net
Sun Jan 7 08:57:58 UTC 2007


You're absolutely right about having a license is not directly opposed
to being free.  I admit I am not an expert on the GPL or any of the
other licenses (GPL, LGPL or FDL) and I'm learning
(http://www.fsf.org/licensing/education if anyone is interested) but as
a "user" I am confident that I can run software under that license an
not have the BSA pounding on my door.  I do realize that the GPL is in
place to protect the software's freedom and must be enforced.

"When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price.
Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the
freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this
service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you
want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new
free programs; and that you know you can do these things. " -www.fsf.org

All I was saying is that having to agree to a license at installation is
a little intimidating, though I also admit that I haven't read the
license for Fedora or OpenSuse word-for-word.  I do realize that Ubuntu
offers a lot of third party and non-free applications and they make
clear warning of that before you agree to download from those
repositories.

Thanks for clearing a lot of things up and sorry if I offended or
confused anyone.

On Sun, 2007-01-07 at 09:22 +0100, Gilles Gravier wrote:
> Anthony,
> 
> Having to agree to a license is not opposed to being free... in fact,
> the GPL license which covers most of the Linux code is far from giving
> free rights to you to do anything with it. You also have obligations,
> and quite strong ones in particular if you are a developer. For
> example, GPL *FORBIDS* you to develop code by taking from the source
> base of a GPL application and using that in a closed source
> proprietary application. This is an extremely constraining
> obligation / restriction that, as a developer, you NEED to be aware
> of, and agree to. As people from Linksys and a few other linux-based
> hardware boxes realized a bit late, they are forced by the license
> (which, if they had thorowly read and knowingly agreed to, might have
> led to different choice of platform) to give out the source of their
> product's firmware.
> 
> Whether it is a good thing for users... or for Linksys is a different
> argument... but nevertheless, there is a license that governs the use
> of Linux. And when you install and decide to use a Linux based distro,
> and other applications, you have to understand the licenses that apply
> to them and you have to agree to what they entitle you to do... but
> also what obligations you have.
> 
> I'm not opposed to having to agree to a license agreement... even in
> the context of free / open source software. The difference between
> that license and a proprietary license is what makes all the
> difference and it's important to know which differences you are
> actually agreeing to. And it should be an explicit agreement rather
> than an implicit...
> 
> Some stuff in your Linux distro are under GPL, some under LGPL, some
> under BSD, and even in some distros, some are under proprietary
> license. Do you know which is which? Do you really know what you are
> allowed to do with each piece of code on your Ubuntu (or other
> distro)?
> 
> Again, this is not extremely constraining if you are a user... but it
> might mean the difference between your company being prosperous, or
> dieing to a lawsuit if you are a developer.
> 
> Gilles.
> 
> Anthony M Simonelli wrote: 
> > On Sat, 2007-01-06 at 17:17 +0100, Knapp wrote:
> >   
> > > Are you saying you're going to use OpenSuse instead of Ubuntu?   I
> > > couldn't leave the Debian based distros.  If I were ever to leave
> > > Ubuntu, it would be for Debian.  I just like running a current desktop
> > > and current Gnome, which Ubuntu provides.
> > > 
> > > On Sat, 2007-01-06 at 10:19 -0500, Julian Alarcon wrote:
> > >     
> > > > JEJE, and I chose Ubuntu 3 Months ago upper Opensuse.. JEJEJE..
> > > >       
> > > Saying goodbye to Ubuntu for some other distro is one thing but Suse?
> > > Is that not a bit like getting on the titanic after it hits the
> > > iceberg? Sure it is a nice ship with a good design but?
> > > Douglas
> > > 
> > >     
> > There are people who question Shuttleworth and Canonical's motive behind
> > Ubuntu and the "corporate involvement" makes people suspicious, but
> > openSuse?  I tried out 10.2 and I actually had to agree to a license
> > agreement from Novell!  The only times I've had to do that was for
> > Lin/Freespire (understandable), Fedora and openSuse.  This doesn't seem
> > 'free' to me.  OpenSuse seems like one of those distros that assumes the
> > user is clueless and tries to do everything for the user automagically
> > and is heavily customized while Ubuntu seems to stay a hacker distro
> > while being a convenient Debian.  Am I totally off or does anyone agree?
> > 
> > 
> >   
> 
> -- 
>     Gilles Gravier = Gilles at Gravier.org = http://www.gravier.org/
> 
>         ICQ : 77488526  || MSN Messenger : Gilles at Gravier.org
>        Skype : ggravier || Y! : ggravier || AOL : gillesgravier
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> 
>   "Chastity is its own punishment." (Solomon Short) [David Gerrold]
>     "De toutes les aberrations sexuelles, la chasteté est la plus
>                      aberrante." [Anatole France]
> 





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