Re: Is linux free

From: Robert Heller (heller_at_deepsoft.com)
Date: 10/07/05 

Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 21:13:14 +0200

  "HalcyonWild" <Halcyon.Wild@gmail.com>,
  In a message on 7 Oct 2005 10:54:00 -0700, wrote :

"> stan@worldbadminton.com wrote:
">
"> > Your are mistaken.
"> >
"> > Linux continues to be free.
">
"> Go to the websites of Redhat, Mandriva or mandrake, Suse, Mepis, etc.
"> See the $ rates quoted. the free ones are the bug riddled test
"> versions. I have seen fedora to be slow and in some cases, crashing.
">
"> > _support_ is often not free and pretty much noone will for
"> > free mail you CD's, and sure some distributions do panhandling,
">
"> Fine, I dont want the free CDs mailed to me, but what about ISO
"> downloads. No ISOs are available for download. If it were allowed to
"> redistribute freely (GNU says that apart from free software, you should
"> have the freedom to redistribute ), there would be download servers out
"> there who would allow you to download linux. I did not find any. Only
"> debian happens to be free, but that again is way behind. If I am
"> allowed to redistribute after buying linux, I might set set up a
"> download site myself. Why is nobody doing it.

White Box Linux (www.whiteboxlinux.org) has GPL versions of both RHEL
        3.0 and RHEL 4.0 available for download
(CentOS) www.centos.org has a GPL version of RHEL 4.0 available for
        download.

These two web sites offer (legal) free downloads of what RedHat 'sells'
(RHEL 3.0 and RHEL 4.0). RedHat Enterprise Linux (the 'pay' version)
just has a few added things. WBL and Centos are 'sanitized' versions
of RHEL -- RedHat's trandmarks and a handful of RedHat specific
'extras' have been removed. Otherwise these distros are in fact
exactly what you would pay for if you were to buy what RedHat 'sells'.
What you would be paying for is *direct support services*. RedHat is
not actually selling code itself. All of the *sources* for RHEL 3.0
and RHEL 4.0 (both the base distros and all of the updates) are
available for free download from RedHat's site. The only thing you
have to 'pay' RedHat for is the binaries on CDs, but what you are
really getting for your money is lots of hand holding (support). If you
don't need this level of support, you can download all of the source
RPMS and build your own system. The people at White Box Linux
(www.whiteboxlinux.org) and CentOS (www.centos.org) have downloaded
these source RPMs and built a set of iso images. And they download and
build the update RPMs (from RedHat).

">
">
"> > and sure some probably have commercial content that isn't free,
"> > but I'm not aware of any you can't have for free if you are
"> > just talking about the Linux content itself.
">
"> Linux content, just the kernel you mean. Just the OS , without all the
"> utilities. Is it. What is it good for then. Will anyone bother to
"> download hundreds of programs and utilities. Many people do not have
"> access to Internet.

All of the utilities and support code are available for *free* download
(eg compilers, utilities, libraries, applications, etc.).

">
"> > Can you point to any counter examples?
"> The websites I mentioned above. I tried Ubuntu and Debian, it left me
"> unimpressed.
"> Ok, you cannot have quality without paying for it, you might say. Then
"> , better we stop using, reporting bugs and testing code for redhat ,
"> suse and mandrake; let them spend money they earn by selling public
"> open source code.

RedHat, Suse, and Mandrake don't sell the 'source code', only packaged
binaries with support services. ALL of the source RPMs are available
for download and I know of two groups that have created re-packaged and
re-branded binary distributions from RedHat's source RPMs, that can be
downloaded for free.

">
">

                                     \/
Robert Heller ||InterNet: heller@cs.umass.edu
http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/~heller || heller@deepsoft.com
http://www.deepsoft.com /\FidoNet: 1:321/153

                              

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