Message-Id: <200203110018.g2B0I9p04857@mail.moulen.org> From: Anthony Moulen <ajmoulen@moulen.org> Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 19:20:52 -0500 Subject: Re: [suse-sparc] Will there be a SuSE 8.0 for Sparc?
I have to say that having read this entire thread, I was amused. We pay
nothing for this distribution, we get help from people in their free time,
and yet someone feels they have a right given to them by the GPL to complain.
What a bunch of crap. Read the GPL, no warranty. And in fact SuSE does
distribute all the source so feel free to build a distribution yourself. The
GPL guarentees you access to source not binaries.
And as to YaST and YaST2 being a derivative work, that is a bunch of hogwash.
The fact that it isn't designed to work alone doesn't mean anything. The
tool is not derived from any code from GPL products, it merely uses public
information on the configuration of these products in order to create modules
to administrate them. The fact is that it could be used to support Solaris,
or BSD, or HPUX if you wanted to just by making adjustments to the
configuration. The fact that the tool supports Linux has to do with the fact
that SuSE sells Linux products and probably nothing more.
I get tired of seeing this stupid ISO argument brought up time and time
again. No one has the right to ISO files. You could if you wanted to, make
ISOs from the FTP version of SuSE and distribute them whereever you wanted.
Although you would be treading thin ice if you called it SuSE still since
then you run into Trademark law. Again the GPL does not guarentee you binary
files, just source, and not even that unless you have the binary. So the
fact of the matter is that they could close down their FTP server and only
sell the package commercially and they would be 100% within the rights given
to them by the GPL as long as they distributed it with source to all the
GPL'ed parts.
I would in fact say that anyone that brings this up, doesn't understand the
purpose behind the GPL. It isn't about give me give me give me. It is about
empowerment. Giving you the user the power to make changes, or redistribute
your modifications as you see fit. Everytime I see this I think of how
selfish the person seems.
You want to keep the Sparc version alive, buy the Intel version and send a
message to SuSE saying that you are buying the Intel version because they
don't sell the Sparc version but you really want to support the Sparc
edition. If you want something for free, gather the code yourself and build
it on your own if you think it is so easy. I own packaged versions of SuSE
7.2 and 7.3 (I didn't use SuSE before that), I also own Mandrake 7.2, 7.1 and
a few other older ones, as well as 3 packages of RedHat, and 2 packages of
Corel, a few Slackware, a couple Yggsdrasil versions, 2 Turbo Linux editions.
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-sparc-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-sparc-help@suse.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.0 : Sun Mar 10 2002 - 16:20:43 PST