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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!airs!ian From: ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Restrictions on 'free' UNIX / 386BSD (Re: selling 386BSD) Message-ID: <5146@airs.com> Date: 17 Aug 92 05:10:14 GMT References: <PHR.92Aug15151100@soda.berkeley.edu> <63DILTJ@taronga.com> <PHR.92Aug15214245@soda.berkeley.edu> <MNDIKJ3@taronga.com> Sender: news@airs.com Lines: 38 peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: [ who benefits because 386BSD is not under the GPL ] >The people who aren't hackers and want to walk down to the store and buy >a shrinkwrapped copy of "386BSD-Lite" with a technical support number and >a bunch of application programs in shrinkwrap on the shelf next to it. I know this issue gets chased around and around a lot, but, after all, just because the Hurd is covered by the GPL does not mean it can not be sold shrinkwrapped in a store. The GPL just means that the distributor has to put a piece of paper in the shrinkwrap saying ``send $100 for complete source code'' as well as another saying ``you may give this software to your friends.'' Apple seems to do fairly well with a freely redistributable operating system. Also, just because the Hurd is covered by the GPL does not mean that programs that run on it must be under the GPL as well. I thought about these issues a lot when I decided to put my UUCP package under the GPL, and I've never seen any argument that was at all convincing as to why that was a bad idea. I've seen convincing arguments against putting library code under the GPL, but they do not apply if you are using shared libraries on a GPL-based operating system. >Mundanes are people too. In fact, they are the people who could make a shrink-wrapped Hurd a success. Hackers would never pay money for such a thing, but people who are just interested in getting their work done certainly would (of course, they would need good reasons to buy it other than ``it's free''). -- Ian Lance Taylor ian@airs.com uunet!airs!ian First person to identify this quote wins a free e-mail message: ``I would prefer my life to contain more hours of pain, if that means that none of this pain is still to come.''