On Son, 2002-04-07 at 21:14, Wolfgang Bornath wrote: > On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 13:46 -0500, Paul Cox wrote: > > On Sunday, Apr 07, 2002, sda wrote: > > NOT providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso is about the > > biggest violation you can make to the GPL. > > Not exactly. Who can demand Mandrake to provide ISOs at all? Nobody. Does > SuSE provide iso files even BEFORE the boxed verion is in the stores? > That is one thing nobody seems to take in account. All I read in the > newsgroup is "8.2 is out. What takes Mandrake so long to bring the boxes > into my home town?" If MandrakeSoft did not provide the ISOs as soon as > they are ready those ppl did not even know there was a new version. > That's like the other big distros handle it. > > The GPL does NOT say you have to put out ISOs of your product ASAP. The > GPL doesn't even say you have to put ISOs on the net at all. All the GPL > says is that if you have a product you can make it public and if you make > it public it has to be free and you have to provide a means for the > public to get the sources.
You are certainly right in terms of GPL. But I don't agree that mdk will fail because it makes ISOs accessible through the net (too early). I myself have been downloading the ISOs starting with 8.0, when I changed from SuSE. The reason for changing was exactly that: why should I pay for a badly set up distribution when I can have others, far more better ones for free? SuSE (like many others) goes the way to sell their distro the "standard" way. But buying SuSE too often meant & means that you pay 100 bucks for something that sucks. I like the Mandrake-style, making it possible to test the entire distro without paying anything for it - thats fun for me and risk for them of course. I am aware that compiling a distro is not free and I will eventually even buy a whole set, but certainly not every time. If I could not download the ISOs anymore, I would just wait for one or two years or so till I bought another release and update just the most vital applications. So I think the Mandrake-Club is a nice thing to create some kind of relationsship between guys like me and a commercial organization like mandrake. > > > And changing to a different > > license will go against everything MandrakeSoft stands for and will > > never happen. > > That is true and will never happen as loing as MandrakeSoft exists. They > could not even if they would like to. All they can do is withdraw their > own programs and put them under a different license. And that would be > the end of a Mandrake Linux Distribution. > > Just my 180,00 Euro (Sorry, but that's what my opinion costs on the > market! You get it for free (as in 'free beer')) > > wobo > -- > Registered Linux User 228909 Powered By Mandrake Linux 8.1 > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > PDAs? Laptops? Linux? UnddasallesineinemWort? http://www.xtops.de ! > > ---- > > Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
