J. Grant wrote: > Hello, > I'm interested to know why "Commerical Apps CD1" is called that? As in > actual fact the entire GNU/Linux Madrake distribution is commercial. > Well, there is nothing wrong with commercialising high quality Free > (open source) software. In fact very glad Madrake is commericialising it. > > Perhaps this should be renamed "Proprietry Apps CD1"? Currently its > miss leading and some people might put in the wrong CD. > > JG > And if they do, urpmi will reject it and again ask for the correct disk.
Except that some rpms did not get put on the PWP CDs, the Install CDs are the same as the download CDs, i.e. they are free software included in the commercial box. That does not make them commercial, because with those CDs you have the following rights: 1. To use 2. To modify for your own use (source code available) 3. To redistribute (and to charge a reasonable copying fee) 4. To redistribute modified copies (and to charge a reasonable copying fee) You also have the binding obligation to pass on those rights in any redistribution. For that reason those install disks cannot be called commercial CDs. Now using the tools on those disks it is possible to make commercial software which you can license differently, and many of the libraries have a license that permits them to be included in a commercial package, so IP for those who want it is still available. The idea here was to make available freely a powerful set of tools to stimulate progress or to support research, and there's a worldwide community behind that. You may note that all the Mandrake-specific tools are copyrighted and licensed under the GNU GPL or GPL2 or LGPL, as appropriate. There is nothing to stop a competitor from putting the tools or modified copies of them into his distribution, or a new entry into the linux commercial community based on MandrakeLinux. It might be better to name them CD1-CD7, though. The commercial CDs are basically done by a different team... People who negotiate with vendors and people who package the apps have little overlap with the developers of the downloadable CDs, and they obviously have many other duties, so the nomenclature grew out of that for internal use. Civileme >
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