Redhat/SuSE was Re: [Fsfe-uk] Upcoming Exhibitions

[Simon Waters]

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Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
>
>>>In the past SuSE have attended this event. Perhaps they would be
>>>willing to sponsor AFFS attendance.
>>
>>Sponsorship would be a great idea :-)
>>Unfortunately there is the small matter in this case of
>>SuSE (specifically YaST) /not/ being freely distributable :-(
>>
>>Maybe Red Hat?
>
>
> I didn't think RH was either these days.  That's why
linuxemporium.co.uk
> has stopped shipping cheap CDs with the ISOs burned on until
the legal
> situation becomes clear.

Redhat's position is primarily that their name and logo be
protected, so you can copy Redhat, replace logos and name, and
redistribute as far as I know Redhat still focus on making the
distro contents entirely "free" (at least for some definition).

At least that is how I understood it.

Whilst it may be inconvenient for those of us who got CD's
cheaply (oh broadband where art thou), I don't think the
position is unreasonable.

Similarly, whilst SuSE may not be 100% signed up to Free
Software, I don't think they are at a point where we should even
consider not accepting stuff from them if it promotes our aims.

Now if it were a company making a profit from selling free
software, whilst publically denigrating the notion of the GPL,
and free software in general - maybe we should refuse.


In terms of freebies - are Knoppix CD's a starter - I haven't
partook myself but at a recent meeting one of our LUG members
booted an (untested) laptop straight into a nice modern Linux
distro, with good hardware detection. Very impressive (well much
better than a Woody install - that is for sure).

(Here Linux boots from CD so no install, and access (Windows
release permitting) to the users own files).

Assuming the experience is typical of Knoppix - and people are
made aware of possible issues. Not clear if it is all 100% free,
but what I can make out it is just a Debian based distro, so
definitely introduces the "right kind of GNU/Linux".

Maybe someone with Broadband and a CD write could take a look.
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