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But You Can Download It For Free, Right?
An unnamed reader writes: "It seems that Libranet wants to start a new trend. They are asking $15 for their download. They make a pretty good case for why, don't you think?" A note on their website (reachable from their download page) includes the following: "We at libranet have come to the conclusion that it is necessary for us to get paid for our work. We produce and support what is perhaps the best GNU/linux distribution ever, and we spend long hours and much effort in doing so. Also we think it unfair that only those users with fast connections can download CD images. We provide a free download of our previous release, which is still a first class product. We have made a simple calculation in deciding on a price for the download of our latest and best version. The price of the CD, less $5 for the production of the CD, less $5 for shipping.
At $15 this is still little to pay for a product of this quality. Compare it to the price of windows software or even to a few cups of coffee."
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Yes. It sucks major ass, and is not funny even a little bit. Try one of the ten thousand funny online cartoons, you moron.
Dude, Badtech is just like Leisuretown... except Leisuretown is humanity's crowning achievement, and Badtech, well, sucks major ass.
Should have bought SuSE Linux. That's the version for girls.
Red Hat: Almost your standard Linux distribution at this time. Bleeding-edge.
Debian: The real standard. Everything, and it all works well.
Corel: Brain-dead install. Idiot-easy use.
SuSE: Everything and the kitchen sink.
StormLinux 2000: Nice, easy, and fully functional.
Mandrake: Improved Red Hat. Neat.
I've had bowel movements more entertaining than that comice strip.
Because Libranet is a very small company. They don't have partnerships and big contracts like Redhat or SuSE have.
They also don't have almost any clients...
But they do package debian and make it easy to install (and forcing newbies straight to GNOME on default - let the user search for KDE - it's on the 2nd CD).
So they have to pay saleries, QA tests, development (they did write some stuff there you know), Support (phone, email, web, newsgroups, etc) - and lets not forget - to pay for ISP, office rent, secretary, sales people etc...
These things do cost money and I think it's pretty fair to pay to them $15.
Personally I wouldn't buy it because I haven't seen a single review anywhere about it - not in Linux weekly news, LinuxToday, slashdot, and other places, but paying for ISO of Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake is fine by me (hey, as long as it's cheap and I get a decent bandwidth from the distributor)
Hetz (Heunique)
I've been wondering how the distros fund the download bandwidth. If you look at the BW prices for the big hosting sites, they can be around $10/gig. So when I download my RH 7.1 ISOs after they come out, will I be costing Red Hat $10-$15?
Seems like charging for large downloads is not a horrible idea.
$3.80 CND for a supreme decaf skim :)
Now I'm not against paying people for good work, or being rewarded for mine, but what makes libranet the "best distribution ever"? Why is it different from a default Debian (with a few extras such as a CD full of stuff, or an administrative tool), Slackware, or Redhat that we can download for free? Redhat (for example) makes money on support and such, and either gives the OS away for free, or cost of media/shipping (except for the bundled software/manual version).
I'm not saying that their methodology is wrong, they are basically saying that the LPBs get the same deal as the HPBs, an OS for the cost of shipping and media, but I'd like to know why this distro is any different.
Windows (32-bit versions): between $1 and $200, depending on vendor and shipping, on Ebay.
Coffee: 50 cents/cup, unless buying in bulk.
$15 is too much when I can get 30 cups of coffee (with free cream and sugar) at my communter train station for that much. Or two "twoway" tickets and two cups of coffee from near BWI to DC from the same vendor.
--
WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Hmm...the difference between them & RH seems to be that they're not releasing their distro with a download option. Bad move if you ask me, this will only turn people away from libranet.
Posted by polar_bear:
This is Libranet's 15 minutes of fame, I hope they enjoy it while it lasts.
Frankly, from what I've seen of their distro, it's not really worth paying for hard copy and a manual, much less for a download. The people who are doing Libranet seem to think that re-branding Debian should be an instant path to riches. I dealt with them directly once, when I worked for a (pretty much defunct now) Linux ecommerce site. (We didn't...)
When I asked what separated them from any other distro they were hard pressed to come up with any answer, and refused to send a sample - and expected us to pick up their product off the bat simply because they had made a Linux product.
As for the suggestion that Linux users won't pay for software - that's not entirely true. I use both Debian and Slackware, I'm a Slack subscriber and generally buy the CD set even after I've downloaded the distro. (Hey, it's available quicker that way...) But, I want to support the Slack team so they can keep developing. But, I don't feel I'm really paying for software - I'm paying for the media, a little support and a manual if I get the full kit. I'm also paying because they do good work, and with any luck they'll continue to.
This little tantrum on the part of Libranet has inspired me to send a check to the FSF and Debian. I really don't see much difference between Libranet and LinuxOne...
Zonker
Whatever happened to sunsite.unc.edu? I know it became metalab and then ibiblio, but didn't that used to be THE source for distributing your Linux software? Long before freshmeat was around you could search through their directory listings and find neat stuff. To distribute it you had to pay a grand total of $0. Everyone seems to want fancy web sites with whiz-bang bullshit style sheets and mysql backends but when it comes down to it, an ftp site on a fast link is the only way to fly.
Check out Starbucks, a large special is 3-4.50.
That said though, I think they're most likely hoping that people who really like their distro will pay for it. Kinda like how everyone always says that they'd like to give their money directly to the artists instead of to the record companies. Well, here's a situation where you can do just that. If you like the distro that these guys put together, then send them the cash.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually, it made me think of museums. A lot of museums are "free," but have a "suggested donation" at the door. Carrying this over into the software domain, you could probably get some interesting reactions by having what looks and smells like an order page, but allows you to enter in any amount that you want (include $0) to "pay" for your software.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Are they paying anything to the thousands of developers who contributed code *FOR FREE* to their distribution? Why should they earn all the money?
If they don't like the racket, they should get out of the buisness of selling other people's code.
Now, assuming a $39.95/month fee, and not including the cost of the modem... It comes to about $.17 for a three hour download.
Tell you what. I'll give you $14, and we'll call it even. ;>
Resumable download protocols have existed for over 10 years.
One wonders if these people that complain about long downloads really ever tried attempting same...
Things in this area have actually improved dramatically in recent years. This "problem" actually used to be remarkably harder; you didn't typically have the LUXURY of being connected all night long.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What work?
Also, if you are so keen on them getting paid why aren't you demanding THEY also pay.
An expectation of "they got it for free, we get it for free" is not entirely unreasonable.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, the GPL is specifically meant to sabotage LibraNet's ability to tweak a few things, makes lots of money, and then lock future users out of their improvements.
This was one of the original motivations for the GPL actually.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Your position is quite disputable and your credentials are non-existence. OTOH, the intent of RMS is well documented and not subject to the subtleties of contract law and legal language. However, the GPL itself is wide open to legal re-interpretation. This process is complex and non-obvious.
One layman commenting on the issue is no more definitive than another.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why? There is nothing in being here that implies any sort of slavish consumerism. There are machines languishing in landfills that are more than capable of connecting someone to this forum.
A MacPlus and a cheap modem would do. Even an XT and a cheap modem would do.
XTs were landfill fodder 10 years ago.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Some of us have NEVER been to Starbucks.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The idea that you should or would want to be downloading it directly from them is rather flawed anyways. If it's good software, it should spread itself around. This 'dilemma' of paying for download bandwidth shouldn't really be.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If you are an isolated end user, and you intend to MODIFY the hardware configuration of you computer: then you will most likely need to be able pop open the hood.
This is taken as a given for just about any other device. Yet it seems so non-obvious in a computing context.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Besides, PCI ethernet is already generally well supported in modern operating systems. Ethernet over USB (and USB in general) isn't.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Someone ELSE already did. They're known as Debian.
Given the sophistication of the Debian package tools, it's not clear what real value this extra packaging adds.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
AUTHOR charging obscene amount for some application.
versus
packager charging any amount for same applications.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Fine, apply this "economic reality" to these individuals as well. Don't simply limit your imposition of "economic reality" on entities that don't resemble corporations.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why? It looks like they've added even less to Debian than Mandrake has added to Redhat.
Debian is still available gratis, as is Redhat, Mandrake, Caldera, Suse and others that are more deserving of patronage.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Perhaps it's losing my DSL line, perhaps I don't get out enough, but until this story I'd never even heard of these guys.
Exactly. And I don't even have high speed access. :-(
I don't mind people asking for money for something they do. I've never heard of them so I really doubt I'll be affected.
Now if Slackware were to start charging for distribution I would consider that alright as well. I grab an .iso once every 18 to 24 months or so so it's not like it's a major thing. And since I know what I'm getting with Slackware, I'll likely pay for it, which is something I don't think I'd do with these guys. Pay $15 for a distro I've never heard of? No thanks.
Actually, the original poster mentioned getting a "comparable" product for free. All other things being "comparable", wouldn't you take the free one?
I hope that you're right and that people take external factors (ethics, better world, etc.) into account when they make purchases -- I definitely agree with your point about voting with one's money.
(Time for a slightly off-topic plug... If you're concerned about this sort of thing in the world beyond computer software, check out the International Federation for Alternative Trade and Ten Thousand Villages. It might take a slight leap to apply the same issues to software, but given the increasing rise of corporate feudalism, I don't think it's too much of stretch.)
What user of *any* OS pays for something when they can get a comparable thing for free?
One of the cool things about Linux (and BSD, etc) is that there tend to be a lot of actually comparable free things available, so of course we use those. That doesn't mean we're *necessarily* any more cheap than anyone else.
Actually, it lets you do more than that. Unless and until you actually distribute something, you have no obligations whatsoever under the GPL. I have no obligation to share with you the source of dpkg simply because I have a copy of the source and you have a copy of the binary - I don't distribute the binary myself; even if I were to distribute it, by giving away my Debian CD, I wouldn't be doing so at a profit and would be passing along the written offer from LSL (where I ordered my CDs - LSL prints the offer in small type on the front of the CD).
The only time you are prohibited from copying and distributing a binary produced from GPLed code is when all of the following are true:
Anything else - distributing with an offer to send the source, distributing not for profit with somebody else's offer attached, or distributing with the source code itself - is perfectly legal. Even this pricing scheme is perfectly legal, so long as either they don't charge more than bandwidth costs for the source code of the GPLed portions of their distro, or include the source code when you download the binary CD images.
I should note that this is only a summary, and you really should go read the GPL yourself. Note especially the clause the defines what source code is, and the clause about aggregation on the same piece of media.
Though I suppose the immediate parent of this post is more wrong, in a sense.
You don't need to own the binary to have a claim to the source - you need to own a copy of a written offer to give you the source.
The person selling the binaries either has to give you such an offer (which you may then give to as many people as you wish), or has to give you the source.
In the hypothetical case imagined above, ddstreet would have to either have to: 1) buy a binary and source bundle, or 2) buy a binary, with which the distributor would have to include an offer to give the source at cost, or 3) ask someone else who bought from the producer for either their copy of the source or a copy of the written offer for the source.
Just because I have the binaries, though, doesn't give me a right to demand the source at cost - say that Geeko, Inc. made a customized version of Gnome and sold it on CD sets which always included both a binary CD and a source CD. (which they sold for, say, $100) Now, suppose that they offer a replacement source CD for $99. This is perfectly legal - because they always distribute the source with the binary, they are under no obligation to replace the source CDs of those customers who lose/misplace them.
Now what Geeko can't do is stop some other company from copying the CDs and selling them at $10/set, pocketing all the money themselves. This is one reason we don't usually see boxed linux distros selling for the same price as, say, Win2000 server. However, if Geeko could convince people to buy their CDs at the high price they were charging, that would be perfectly legal.
Why do people keep confusing Free Software with Free Speech?
The two aren't at all the same.
So I go pay them $15, and turn around and place the exact same download on my own server, but only charge $5.
Perfectly legal, right?
We produce and support what is perhaps the best GNU/linux distribution ever
:)
Hate to break it you fellas, but GNU/Linux Debian has already occupied that slot
Question: if one of my programs get shipped on your CD, do I get paid too???
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Erm, I don't think that's right...
As far as I'm aware, the GPL simply insists that when LibraNet (or whoever) charge you for their software/distro, they have to make the source code easily available to you as well as the binaries. That's it basically, the rest is window-dressing.
Regards,
Denny
PS - not a lawyer, don't work for GNU, ignore me if you want :)
--
Police State UK - news and
Copyrighting the CD's would mean that they're not honoring the GPL- any restrictions on the distribution, etc. is in violation of the license grant.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Did the laws of physics change when I wasn't looking? I doubt it. Last I checked, actual data transfer is always a physical process.
Has anybody tried a license like this?
I suspect it is not GPL compatable and so you cannot use it for code that is already GPL, but it could be used for new software.
I am a Linux user... a hardcore one. I stopped using Microsoft products 2 years ago and have never looked back. Now I have a job where I code in Linux all day long and then go home to play in Linux on my home computers.
That said, here is the software I have paid for:
Red Hat Linux 4.2
Civ: CTP for Linux
Myth 2 for Linux
Quake 3 for Linux
Unreal Tournament (downloaded the Linux installer)
BeOS versions 4 and 5 Professional
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I have several times taken delight in being able to read source code to understand why something is going wrong. One does not need to understand a whole system to detect a misuse of a feature. Remember that we are not only talking about the kernel here, but all the auxiliary libraries as well.
On the same note, there have been occasions when I have not been able to understand why something is going wrong with a proprietary system---and there has been no fast way of looking up why.
Lars
__
Reality or nothing.
Anyone seen the the hackerlabs/regexp.com site? This site has almost the attitude of the article, but they do still provide anonymous ftp. I guess you could call it grudgeware. They only "strongly encourage" you to donate, er, I mean pay the "Download Fee." They also have self-assessed GNU "GPL Registration" fees in addition to traditional licensing. Huh. At prices like that, though, I'd hope it's both a regex library and a dessert topping.
Yeah, apt sounds great -- assuming you can get Debian installed. I got SuSE 6.4 and Mandrake 7.2 up and running in two to three hours. After three hours with Debian 2.2r2, the installer was still bitching about not finding a NIC, even though it had already activated the PCMCIA Ethernet card. Worse, it wouldn't even let me skip over the network config so I could work on it later.
My two-year-old Slackware is more newbie-friendly.
Go away and read what the GPL says. Then come back.
(It's at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
What the GPL says is:
There are a couple of other options, one of which is to provide a written offer to provide source code for the cost of distribution. But if you choose option (a), you are not obliged to give out source code to 'anyone who asks' - you just have to ship the source code together with the binary.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Humm. . . Let's do the math. . . $10.
By Libranet's reconing, that's enough for, like, two cups of coffee.
-"Zow"
Okay, most of the discussion that I've seen centers around the point of "is this legal or not?" The conscensus seems to be that it is, with the caviot that anyone else can take it after they've paid their $15 and give it away ir charge less (I guess one way to look at that is that they're making mirrors pay).
Now what I'm wondering is, is this move really smart? I mean I don't remember hearing anything about Libranet before today - if I did I thought, "Just another disto" and promptly forgot about it. In this saturated market for Linux distros with almost everyone (esp the big ones like RH, Deb, SUSE, Mandrake, TL, Slack, insert fav here) giving their distro away for free, how does Libranet hope to ever gain any market share?
Okay, so they give away the previous version. That might work well for ghostscript where there's really no compitition & the product is stable, but that's not the case with Linux distros. I started using Debian back in '97 when my slackware distro wouldn't work on a friend's new machine. A year later I went to using RH because Debian wouldn't run on the new machine I had at work. (For the record I'm now using Mandrake, but I just got Debian and OpenBSD discs to play with.) Given my experience, giving away the old version of a distro is a sure way to drive away potential customers.
-"Zow"
The virtual tip jar if the user wants to thank them for a great product then it will be at the user choice. But hey they can do what ever they want it is thier company.
But they have added value with their labour: they've saved you the time (and expense) of organizing the distribution; and of creating and maintaining web access to that distribution.
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Oh, yes, surely; I agree that the its only the value-adding labour that counts. My original (and, I admit, poor analogy) was to draw a parallel with artistic labour: a raku plate, for example, is just pretty clay, but it has value beyond the clay, and well-executed raku is quite valuable even though it contains no more clay than any other piece of raku.
Likewise, the Linux distribution is pretty much just clay: there's nothing particularly special about the binaries in any one distribution. It's the artistry in the distro that creates the value: a well-organized (=artistic) distro is more valuable than a poorly-organized distro. Ditto the website.
Anyway, my point was that they shouldn't be criticised for asking payment: if it's a distro you want to have, it must have value to you, ergo, it's not unfair to ask you to pay.
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I'm sure you'd have no quibbles were they to be selling the distribution on solid gold discs, hard-carved by wizened old men wearing loupes and working with nanochisels. It'd be worth the price of the gold plus the cost of labour, surely.
How's the download version any different than that? Sure, it's perhaps not quite so blatantly labour-intensive, but someone had to do some gruntwork in putting together the package, let alone creating the fancy website for it. That's gotta be worth some amount of money.
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I realy, realy don't understand all this fuss.
Until today I had never heard of this "libranet" distribution and yet we have people crawling all over slashdot claiming this is the best linux distribution.
Come on guys, the company doesn't even support it's own distribution: ftp://ftp.libranet.com/pub/updates
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
On the other side, by just putting one single program that isn't GPL:ed and with a stricter licence they are fully in there right to make shure that there iso imanges dosn't get spread. You can take everything from the iso immage and remake a new iso image without that software. Bur then you got your own distriution.
/ Balp
> The distribution itself is copyrighted, it is a
> particular form in which other material is
> presented
In my interpeation of the GPL the combined work (i.e. the distribution) has to be GPL:ed as well. But that is not shure. OpenBSD uses this distinction between software and distribution layout to keep iso images away.
/ Balp
Why, those codes have decided that they like the possibility for other to sell there work and that they DON'T need to get the money in that case. If they don't like that they shouldn't use GPL or any other Open Sourced licence (http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html) The first criteria in the definition os open source is that this is possible. If you don't like it don't get into open source, or free software (http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html, http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/selling.html).
As long as you know that they havn't added anything to there distributions that is coverd by an other licence that GPL that dosn't give you that right. They might have there own installscripts that don't is GPL'ed or something then you are might be breaking there rights.
But if is is a "mere aggregation" then maybe it dosn't forefills the requirements as needed to recive copyright. At least in Sweden, there is a need for originality (i guess thats the right word) i.e. a hello-world program does not recive copyright. Must other contries has someting simular to that. But I don't know if this distinction has ever been tested.
The we have the simularites beteen the layout of the cd and the typograhical work in a book. The typographical work is clearly copyrigthed, but is the cd layout (as the mere iso immage) I don't know if this ever has been tested eigther. There are some differenced in the electronic world.
> Does anybody know what the real cost of a typical Linux download is? Well at the bandwidth rates I pay ($4 per GB), a 600 MB download would cost roughly $2.35. Jason
-==-
This is not quite the same. SuSE is well
established and those who are familiar with
SuSE are willing to pay what is necessary
to get it.
This place (which I've never heard of before)
is shooting themselves in the feet as virtually
no one has had an opportunity to check them
out. No one in his or her right mind is going
to put $15 out for something that it's not even
sure to work when you can get something that
works for $1.99 at Cheapbytes or go to Walmart
or Staples and get a distribution with books
for $25
I pay through the nose (almost 4$ CDN!) for mochaccino around here. But I am a snob.
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ESR can think whatever the hell he wants, it still has no bearing on the GPL. Instituting a mandatory charge for a GPL'ed product is a violation of the license. These people can do whatever the heck they want with the software they create, but they are not entitled to take other people's software and violate the terms of the license under which they obtained copies in the first place.
Pay these people their money and get on with your life.
When hell freezes over. If it were my code they were pirating -- and that is the correct word in this case -- I'd sue the hell out of them. GPL != public domain no matter how many get-rich-quick-for-trivial-tweaks parasites there are out there who might believe otherwise.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
It's not about money. I'm already paid reasonably well for writing software during the day. The code I write on my own time and release under the GPL is another matter altogether -- it's about freedom for its users. If I wanted to help fatten the coffers of businessmen, I'd keep it closed and demand a licensing fee, not release it under the GPL.
I find it disturbing that so many software companies think the generosity of GPL software authors is an invitation to theft, especially when those same companies would not hesitate to sue anyone who blithely disregarded their licenses.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
This is at best misleading.
SuSE can be installed, for free, off their own ftp servers, which they pay bandwidth costs of. You simply download a floppy image, boot it, and install off the network. CDROM images are not put up, partly because it would be significant effort (especially to keep them up to date!), bandwidth, space, etc. And partly beacause they're giving you an incentive to buy the product.
This doesn't change the fact that you can install off the internet for $0, quite easily.
-josh
I have seen several replies claiming that someone can just mirror the distribution. IANAL, but I am pretty sure this can't be done legally without permission. While individual parts of the distribution may be under the GPL, the aggregate distribution may be under a different copyright. If I recall correctly, OpenBSD CDs consist almost entirely of individual parts that are under copyrights that allow third party redistribution; however, the CDs themselves are copyrighted by Theo de Raadt. You therefore can't legally put up an copied image of an official OpenBSD CD up on a mirror without permission from Theo de Raadt. As long as one includes the source of the individual GPLed components in any download or CD and does not impose additional restrictions on modification or redistribution of the individual GPLed components in addition to those of the GPL, one has discharged the obligations of the GPL without having to have the entire work free to the world to mirror.
... OK, I went back and re-read a couple of sections of the GPL, and though IANAL, it makes no mention of how/what I have to do with the binary itself.
Thus, as far as I can tell, this is a perfectly legitimate way to work this:
Now, of course, people could take the source obtained from #3, and build their own ISO image, then redistribute that themselves, and this is perfectly legal. However, should the original author choose to, he can forbid the distribution of the original executable if he wants. Or he could demand a royalty. Or whatever. It's all legal under the GPL.
Probably about the only way to enforce this would be through watermarking the original binary. Otherwise, how would you tell if a binary is yours or not?
One last thing: I could certainly see a possible place where this would be a big benefit: suppose I have Super-Wiz-Bang-Studdly-Compiler that spits out really optimal code. I could sell the binary that I compiled with my compiler, and then give away the source for use by people with GCC (or any less Studly compiler). You could charge per copy, and not let people distribute your version, but still give people the freedom of the code. IMHO, this is a good value-add.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Thanks. I thought this post was very informative. Question. How does this affect embedded devices? If I sell a product that uses GPL'ed code, am I only required to return code to those who can prove ownership of my device?
How many people have bandwidth that they can devote to downloading a set of 600MB ISO images to burn onto a CD-ROM? I find that it's a big enough pain to download a comprehensive set of patches to apply to one of the Tru64 systems at work -- usually about, say, 70MB (which include text and postscript versions of the patch release notes, installation guides, etc.) -- that I usually wait until after hours to keep from impacting anyone else.
I guess some people are a lot more patient than I am when it comes to downloading software. I really can't imagine seeing any benefit in taking the time to downloading up to a half dozen ISO images. It's gotta be cheaper to drive to the nearest bookstore and just purchase a distribution. Plus there's the disk space needed to hold all this prior to burning. Heck, if I have 600 MB free on a disk it doesn't seem to stay that way for long. :-)
How many downloaders are they trying to get to pay the fifteen bucks. It surely can't be that many.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I'd say they were more likely to be trustworthy than some person putting up a for-charge mirror because she wanted to get a little of Libra's action.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I have no problem with this. As long as they still allow it to be freely redistributed and still provide source, it's still fine under the GPL.
Of course, a mirror will come up somewhere and people will be able to download for free from that I'm sure. While I wouldn't suggest you should be brought to court in any way for doing it, I would ask that people refrain from downloading from a free site out of courtesy.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It is perfectly valid and legal. You are allowed to charge for distribuition. Check the GPL. You must provide the source free of charge and accessible though.
So I see no problem here.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Perfectly legal, right?
Yes. This might be an interesting way to get others to supply your bandwidth (for the downloading of CD images) for you.
Plus you'll probably get mirored on all the warez sites as well...
Sounds like a smart move to me.
Slashdot effect. No mirrors. That's all there is to it.
Whenever a new release of their distro is released, they will most likely not be able to handle all the traffic, and will thus have little traffic.
There's not much more to it - even something like kernel 2.4 or RH minor-version deels are really hard to get with a complete mirror system across the globe. A single company (ok, maybe BBNPlanet) generally cannot get that kind of bandwidth for $15 a person (if it can be gotten at all).
Redhat 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0,6.1,6.2
SuSe 7.0, 7.1
Borland Kylix 1.0
Oracle Enterprise 8.0, 8i
InterBase (before it was free)
ODBCBridge
CodeWarrior
[...]
Linux users DO pay for software, including the OS itself
"Now, I hope and pray that I will, but, today I am still just a bill"
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
hell, that's only about 50 cents US :)
-josh
They're selling bandwidth and the way that they organized the code, not the code itself. You can get that for free elsewhere. This is quite a standard distribution model and quite within the Right Way to make money in a Free Software world. They're nothing underhanded or wrong in this approach.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Both have problems recognizing hardware and my experience has been that windows networking is not as good as Linux networking and Linux is nice cause it is easier to load and unload modules from the kernel without the reboot that is required in win 95/98/NT4. I have not tried w2k or winme but I know both of them still crash and they only are supposed to support a limited hardware, so they say.
If you don't like Linux you can try solaris, or a BSD or even MAC OS X. Don't think of this as flame that is not what I am intending, more my point is that just because they are requiring money is not a bad thing for them to do. They need to make money to continue doing what they are doing. you want a free Linux distro, get debian. It will probalby always be free.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
A module is a driver. In windows 95/98/NT 4.0 you have to reboot after adding a new driver. Try this.. turn off your scanner on windows (if you have one) then start your windows box. After your system boots up turn on your scanner. Is is recgonized? Probably not. I ahve not tried w2k so maybe that will, but with Linux you can modprobe -a and presto it is. Then when you are done you can rmmod if you want. I do this with my scsi cdrom and scanner as they share the scsi card and I don't use them all the time. This is what I meant by modules. A modules is a peice of code that makes things work. It may be a driver like in case of my scsi card or it may be some peice of code that can be dynamically loaded and unlaoded from the OS to change 'running' behavior of the system. Linux has been doing this for years and windows has not.
I think the problem here is that you don't care about learning anything about your system, not Linux. Windows is making things easier in that sense, however there is a cost. The latest windows XP almost needs 128Meg of RAM as well as a pretty fast processor to run quickly. I imagine that soon your need the power of a web server to run the desktop windows operating system. No joke here cause that is where they are heading and they really are not adding anything but useless fluff that people could do without.
Use what you like .. I use Linux and windows as I think they both have plusses and minuses...
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Bottom line: if you don't want people redistributing your code, then use a different license for it. The GPL doesn't prohibit charging for free software, and in fact a previous post had a link to a page written by RMS encouraging people to charge for it.
I could also argue that Linux distributors have made your code accessible to many more users than you would have been able to do yourself, and so in a sense they have contributed something even if it's not code, and have some claim to remuneration for their services.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
As to whether one can charge for GPL sure... But as far as I can tell, if someone else posted a copy of the libranet distro and offered for free that also would be legal. Infact anyone else, based on GPL could even charge for the CD, or charge for the downloads, and never have to pay Libranet.
Atleast that is my recollection of the argument. You can charge for distributing but you can't keep others from distributing except as far as the GPL does.
---
Whether or NOT libranet provides a service that is worth paying for, or whether they deserve to be paid for it, the question is more effectively whether anyone wants to pay for it. As far as it goes, if they have written some software they want to sell, well GPL isn't always the best way to get money. If it isn't GPL'ed then of course whatever license they choose to use is their business. In any case it seems to me unlikely that anyone who is sophisticated is going to pay for libranet. Debian itself is quite easy to handle and they DO provide cd images as well as other several other installation methods. Infact Libranet just takes debian and adds to it if I recall correctly.
d
To tell you the truth, I'd never even heard of Libranet. I generally spend an hour or so a day killing time at work on Slashdot, too.
--Xantho
I think you misunderstand. You are paying for the service of their making the download available. Not for the code.
... the standard overhead that goes with any business. And this is likely to be a significanly larger share of the overhead than the technical staff would have been. Which drives prices up.
You know, the server, the T1 lines, the sysadmin, etc. Overhead. This is fair, if a bit tricky to price. The problem is, that once you start charging anything, you start needing to add bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers, insurance,
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yes.
> distribution then tough. There's no such thing as
>a right-to-profit. You work for a start-up you
>take your risks. Sometimes you get burned. Find a
> new business plan, guys.
i think that's exactly what they have done. ;-)
Not that you should have noticed
-earl
Sheesh!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
...so someone'll just download it once, get the source, compile it, and put up a mirror, all within his/her/its GPL rights.
Wasn't there an earlier article about a case like this in which some company wanted to charge something like $1-2k/copy?
It's perfectly GPL-legal to charge for distribution. What the license-holder can't prevent is -re-distribution.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
On the web page for LibraNET's Linux distribution download, they claim that they have consulted with the FSF and that this is legitimate!
/* -rf the development machine now!?
Frankly, I don't know of anyone who used LibraNet's distribution before now, and I have the feeling I will not be meeting any more. This is an example to open source developers on how to doom your project with almost clinical accuracy.
LibraNet may have been poor before, but they can expect to be poor and scowled at until they dry up and blow away.
This is the worst download policy I've ever seen! Why don't they just go ahead and rm
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
- /pub/isoimages - pay for
- /pub/theircode - pay for
- /pub/containsgplcode - free
With this approach any GPLed code is still available without a cost. If they don't use this approach then they are in danger of having to pay for QT and other software which has a 'commercial' clause in them.Jumpstart the tartan drive.
...especially the part of "getting paid for one's work."
By the same token, I'd pay, say, $2 for a libranet download without the rights to a technical support. We all have to have our options, right?
Personally, I paid in full for my copy of SuSE 6.4 - which is totally different situation from Libranet, because it's an independent distribution, as opposed to a tweaked Debian.
SuSE 7.1 - their latest distribution - is available as 3(?) Gb ftp directory, but there's no ISO image (what they used to call "evaluation" version).
SuSE developers stated that at this moment they have no plans to produce a downloadable CD.
Not for long!
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
It strikes me as a little strange to pay for software that others have developed, but they are free to do that, whether we think it's right or wrong.
However, they're definitely in the right to ask for people to "donate" more or less for the server space/power usage/bandwidth usage that your ISO downloads take up. ISO's are not bandwidth or server friendly!
EOM
They can do this, absolutely. Nothing, I repeat, nothing in the GPL *requries* you to distribute to anyone, it just requries you license what you DO distribute under the GPL.
So.. nothing prevents someone you 'sold' a copy to from simply giving it away to all your potential customers. Nothing at all.
It also only requries you to provide source to people you have distributed to... so if I pay for a copy, and then give it to you, the people I got it from have no obligations towards you at all... I do.
They don't 'owe' you anything . They are under no obligation to give you an image of anything. That's at their discretion.
The only time they have an obligation to provide anything is if they distribute a binary version to you, they must give you source, or make it available to you. So if you bought the CD from them, they would have to provide source as well, on a commonly accepted medium.
The GPL only requires a couple thigns that are relevant here.
1) that anyone you distribute to gets the code licensed under the GPL as well.
2) That you provide/make available source to anyone you distribute binaries to.
So.. accordign to #2, if your 'friend' somewhere has binareis he received from them, they are not obliged to give you the source... they are obliged to give your friend the source.
They are not charging for the work.. they are charging you for a distribution in a cd-image format, which is a lot of work. They are not charging for 'other people's work'. They are not pretending the 'own' the copyrights on the work, and not telling you you can't go and give it out to everyone after you get it from them. They are simply saying 'if you want to download the cd image from us, you pay us $15'
That's perfectly fair.
"You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, ..."
As I see it, the choice of the word "may" in the above quote renders the statement as sort of a recommendation.
Now, if the word "may" were replaced with "must" then you might have something... but in reality it's not.
-slams
I quote:
`Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.''... Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere.
Now, this is part of RMS' official definition of free software, which the GPL was created to protect.
Now a quote taken from the GPL's Preamble:
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish),...
So, in conclustion... RFM people.
You can find the complete free software definition here: Free Software Definition
and the GPL here: GPL
-slams
This is exactly why no-one will get rich just selling GPL software (cf. recent article about Redhat selling value added services). There's a bit in the GPL about reasonable distribution costs. With the Internet, distribution costs tend to zero and so GPL software will always be cheap (hurrah!).
Sig pending!
it depends what you drink. if you get a large cup of really good coffee, it can run you $10. for instance, Jave Hut, a coffee shop here in worcester mass. has a drink called the psycho blast. if i remeber right, the ingredients are as follows: 8 shots of espresso (brewed with caffeinated water), ground chocolate covered espresso beans, high caffeine coffee ice cream, and whipped cream on top. served chilled.
(god, my kidneys must hate me.)
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
And the FSF is still makeing money doing just that. They sell CD-ROMs, manuals, tee-shirts and more on their web page at http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html.
Now, who wll be the first to complain that they charge 4x more to organizations than to individuals for the CDROMs.
Now, why would they provide the MD5 hash for free when that would make it easier to download from elsewhere?
Though as a counter-argument I'd have to agree that it's a good way to spread out the cost of bandwith.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Gee, everyone here seems to be awfully focused on that $10 difference. Perhaps you all need to set up PayPal dontation pages to help you with food and clothing.
As for me, $10 is hardly worth having my platform used as part of another major DOS attack, or having all my https protected form submits emailed to a hotmail account by the built in browser. I can skip a meal at Wendys for one day to know my platform is (more) secure.
Talk about penny-wise, pound-foolish!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, odd that you should label your post so - I'd personally be inclined to disagree as you had no content.
What part of my post did you fail to understand? Without enlightening us where the failure occured, we cannot help and you are doomed!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not saying that I myself might not go to someplace that had a distribution for free to download instead of the $15 distribution - but it would not be the SAME distribution!!
Are you really going to download "fred's rippin distribution 'o fun"? Not me. I might download a free Debian or Red Hat, but only from a major server.
The argument about charging for a distribution at all is totally seperate from deciding where to get a particular distribution from.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, that's fine - but why am I going to pay $5 to download an image you *say* is the same and free of trojans, when I could pay $15 to get it from the source?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's easy to give away the code. Have a free downloadable CD full of tarballs. The only differentiation Linux companies have is spec files (or whatever packaging system they use), patches, and testing. You license this stuff as proprietary, release only binary RPMs, and you avoid the cheapbytes problem, and the "based-on" knock offs. Yes, the open source community will get all pissed off and scorn them, but it won't matter. What matters is how long you can stay in business in the long run, and so far no Linux company has proven they can do this (no, RH doesn't count yet). Linux companies don't have the balls yet to do this, but they will.
(Note how I don't mean package updates within the same version as in the
Yes, downloading the source of the packages I want and compiling it myself is still an option. But I have better things to do with my time. In short, why would I use this distribution when I can use others that allow me to download packages from newer releases of their distribution?
I don't contest their right to do what they want with their distribution, but, I can't see too many people going for this especially given the frequency of releases for most distributions I've seen.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Maybe to have a real installer that doesn't feel like pre-RH 5.2? Or to be able to have something better than aptitude/debconfig which will detect your video card and, at least, offer you a selection of monitors to choose from instead of inputing sync rates? Or to have software which is more up-to-date than what is offered in stable and packaged better (i.e. no conflict/broken dependancies) than the stuff in testing or unstable?
I use Debian every day and truth be told once it's installed it is, for the most part, a dream to work with. But the install is definately not Debian's selling point and it is an issue that may or may not be resolved when Woody is stable for all I can tell.
Going back to configuring XFree, why haven't the maintainers ripped the monitor values from RH's configuration utility which is GPL'd and incorporate that information into a user-friendly interface? Part of OSS is to stop reinventing the wheel. If somebody has done the legwork and got that data in an easy to access format then run with it! I'm not asking for RH's utility but I am asking for something better than what Debian currently offers and the pieces are out there for the taking.
Truth be told, while I use Debian I know I'll purchase Progeny and I might even purchase Libranet. Their efforts to make an easily installable distribution can go back into Debian which will benefit everyone. Heck, $15 is less than two tickets to a movie. Add in popcorn and some sodas and $30 bucks ain't that much. I can easily toss that into the communal kitty to improve Debian and add in a bug report or two just for kicks.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Then explain why the FSF charges $5,000 for CDS of custom compiled software? Or why does RedHat charge $1000+ for their enterprise server package if they are only allowed to charge for distribution? How could the FSF promote charging for services if you can only charge for distribution?
The GPL permits you to charge as much as you like and I don't think anyone you're replying to has implied otherwise, so it's a little difficult to tell what your point is. The FSF charge $5,000 I imagine because they could use the money and there are, presumably, people willing to pay it. If the software is GPLd then the people who have thus acquired it can then redistribute it at whatever fee they choose, and so on.
Erm... actually okay he did say you could only charge the cost of distribution. You were right, he was wrong, I don't read carefully enough etc
My apologies.
I think it's a great idea, if you can still download it for free, and they aren't violating any of the licenses of their software.
Personally, I've contributed money to the Debian project by donating a few dollars whenever I purchased ISO cds from linuxcentral.com. Unfortunately, I now have cable, and I don't need to use linuxcentral any more.
I think more distros should have donation pages off of their main site - which would allow a user to donate some money for each ISO. I'm not sure that I could afford 15 bucks per distribution release (some are 3 a year) but I would happily fork over a few dollars here and there to help pay for the bandwidth and storage costs that allow me to access and download the isos.
Personally, I think that a few more distros are going to do this. Mandrakesoft has just released MandrakeFreq - a semi-regular update of the ISO with latest packages, and several people wanted to donate some money to the cause.
I, however, would not donate money to a distro that didn't allow others to still access the isos for free.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
I know I sure don't; but when I got desperate enough to use my CD drive that I dove into NetBSD to fix the lockup that it caused, it was certainly nice to be able to. And that the fix, ultimately, was another line in a quirks table, meant it was a lot less painful than I'd feared. Granted, not all OS tweaking is that easy, but I think sometimes there's an aura of sanctity about the kernel that's not always justified.
Back on the net after two months building KDE2!!
"In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a
storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."
(Last Paragraph, S. 2 of the GPL)
I have at least 7 or 8 different distributions of Linux that I have purchased. I do so to show my support of there product not because I necessarily use them. I can understand that they need money, and being a relatively unknown disto this is probably there only option.
./ effect(tm) :-)
but for fifteen bucks? perhaps they should EMPHASIZE the collection plate (I mean after all there getting publicity now
I don't use eleetism in my Email
They are free to charge $15 a download if thats what they like, it's within their right in the GPL to charge for it. However they should realize that someone can pay the $15 dollars and download it then set up a mirror and charge $1, or even provide downloads for free. That's also permitted in the GPL. They have to accept that charging for downloads is a double-edged sword and that anyone can just find a path around them to get their software.
As long as they accept this, it's fine with me; the moment they try to stop the second person from offering it for free then I wil have issues.
After all, they may be doing some work, but there was alot of work done for them by others contributing under the GPL; to put restrictions on code that isn't theirs would be a clear violation.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
First off, make sure you are using a fairly standard distro your first time out - when I was starting, I first tried a funky copy of TurboLinux , it didn't come in a box, and I was sadly disappointed with it. I then tried RedHat 5.2, and liked it alright, installed good, but never got around to really using it. I then set up a SuSE 6.3 box, and have been using that since.
I will probably try a version of Debian next time round, or maybe go with the latest SuSE. Or perhaps Mandrake - not sure at this time. SuSE 6.3 has been pretty solid for my needs. I have only patched the kernel to 2.2.14 (13 as packaged) to get my ZIP drive working proper. I have been pretty pleased.
Drop the USB thingie and get a real NIC - they can be had cheap enough (under $20).
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Even if you don't save to disk the RAM is in a measurably different state than if the download in question isn't stored in it. Binary state always translates to some form of physical state somewhere down the line. Those electrons removed from semiconductor junctions are a form of physical state.
SP? No, you spelt it correctly.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
This is my understanding of the GPL:
- You can do whatever you want with the source code. -- fold, spindle, mutilate or improve.
- You can distribute copies -- either source or object, as long as the people you distribute the copies to get (or have free access to) the source code -- and all configuration files, etc. needed to (re)generate the binaries you distribute.
- You can charge anything you want for the copies (or nothing).
- Anybody who gets a copy can do the same thing.
So, As I understand it, what they're doing is legal, as long as the $15 includes access to the full sources, and people have the rights to redistribute.--
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
There is NOTHING wrong with me taking a copy of Redhat Linux, or any other code - calling it XtalLinuX, putting up the XtalLinuX.com web site, and charging you $40/CD for it. I don't even have to make the source code available to the general public. That would be the nice thing to do, of course, but the GPL has one, and only one requirement:
Anyone who gets the binary gets the source, to do so as they please, under the GPL.
This of course means that you can buy a copy of XtalLinuX, and then give it away free to anyone who asks, if that's your perogative. If I charged you $5000 instead of $50, you might be less inclined to do so - but both are perfectly legal under the terms of the GPL.
What's wrong with this? I try to buy every major revision of Redhat because I think it saves me a lot of time, and it's a good product compared to the alternatives. The money IMHO is well spent, and like it or not, everybody has to eat - charging for support is one model, but there's nothing wrong with selling GPL code. I've done it in the past, and I'll likely do it in the future. The key point, is that once the binaries and source leave your hands, that person can do with them whatever they want - that's what FREE as in SPEECH means. IE is free as in beer - read the EULA - once you drink the beer, you don't get much else. Except maybe a nasty belch or two!
Hope that clears things up.
..don't panic
I don't mean to disillusion you, but that $200 ceiling only covers *desktop* Windows versions - NT/2000 Server starts at about $500 plus CALs; by my reckoning would be about $2-3k to replace Linux with Win2k on our little office Netfinity (not counting aggro and downtime)
:-)
Windows 2000 DCS is $10's of k to $100k range.
Scary, isn't it
Can you really call that nasty dirt water you get at work coffee? Even Denny's coffee is better than that.
I've read it plenty of times. Maybe you should read it, and discuss it with a lawyer if you don't understand it.
to give any third party,
I cut-n-pasted that from what you just posted.
Think about it.
Another issue many don't understand: You have to own the binary to have a claim to the source.
.
BULLSHIT
That is pure BS. You're saying that if I wrote a program as GPL, and someone else changed it and started selling binaries, I would have to buy a binary to get the source to the changes they made? You are totally wrong.
Once you make your GPL'd code public (sell or give it to anyone) then you MUST make the source available to ANYONE who asks.
Since my workplace is kind enough to provide free coffee, shouldn't my downloads be free? 15$ is a buttload of free coffee.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
> a driver for my Netmate USB -> Ethernet
Since it's 10Mbps only, it's probably kawasaki-based. Try the "kaweth" driver at http://kaweth.sourceforge.net/
... there is also an updated version in the 2.4 "ac" series of kernels.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I'll have nothing to do with this distribution, and I'll direct people away from it whenever the opportunity presents itself.
I don't object to them asking for monitary contributions for their work. I object to them demanding it as such. I do buy copies of distributions. I don't buy them for the manuals, or support, or whatever VARish features they offer (although those are nice too). I buy them for the same reason I give money to buskers; they're making the world a better place, and I appreciate that.
I wouldn't give money to a busker who wasn't playing, and I won't pay for a distribution I can't download and try for free.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Bandwidth pricing is anything but simple. But AFAIK bandwidth costs at least US$3/GB for a big site. So that ISO someone donwloads costs the sender [if not the receiver] ~$2.
At $3.29 per grande cappucino at Starbucks (maybe more depending on location), they're about right.
:-)
It's unfortunate that I can't do without my Starbucks grande cappucinos.
Okay, so Tyler Durden really wouldn't approve of this defense of Starbucks.
;-)
It really depends on who makes the cappucino. At my Starbucks, I know many of the baristas, so they take extra care to make my drink. Granted - the newer, less experienced ones usually don't make them very well. Eventually, they get the whole weight thing (a cappucino of a certain size is supposed to weigh a certain amount, meaning you have the correct balance of espresso, steamed milk, and foam).
The only time I've been to Borders for coffee (great computer book section, by the way), they made me a café mocha instead of a cappucino. The mocha tasted like Hershey's chocolate syrup, which really didn't impress me much. I should give them another try, though.
So, when is the Liberator coming to destroy my apartment?
Uh....
200k for developers...
Uh.... I hate to inform you, but most distro's are not comprised of their own material. You have to take this into effect when calculating development costs. Being as how most individuals start from an existing distro and modify up.... the development costs again begin to spiral downward.
Where are you buying your bandwidth for a 100k...
(mirrors reduce this cost, less bandwidth required, less spending, and you reach a greater number of people due to greater availability)
You seem to be thinking fairly large for a no-name distrobution... probably starting from someone elses distro to begin with... and so far... barely any support for your customer base. (but you got a whoppin beast of an internet connection... which will be good cuz your no talent developers who jumped shipped from a failing dot com will need the bandwidth for porn and quake).
Obviously, if you are going to make a major commitement to a product... you will spend a good deal of money and you will have to wait for returns on this product. Being how it is GPL, the customer can pretty much give away your great product to the next guy or improve upon it himself. This is why the model for making money on GNU/Linux is a support oriented one. Yeah, the other guy can give it away all he wants... but your customers are the ones who will be taken care of operations wise.
Selling a product, doesn't just mean selling the distro... its the books, the support, the pretty little inserts and the name.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Pay $10 for a distribution now, pay $10 to download a 200 byte perlscript later. One of the advantages of having something completely free is that you can download it, and delete it if you don't like it, with no loss. If there were 10000 distributions out there I wanted to try, each one free, all I'd be spending is my own time (and whatever for my internet connection which is a foregone conclusion anyhow ;)). If I had to pay $10 for each one...
... is that this distribution is based mostly on debian... and while i am sure the guys at libra do work very hard, the guys at debian laid all the base work... and all they ask for is help, and donations of hardware or money if you've got any to help out...
... i feel differently donating then having to pay for something i know someone who is not getting paid did most of the ground work for.
I would like to pay for Linux (actually, I have bought some SuSE distro's in the past) but stuff like this is too difficult, how am I going to pay, credit card ? I don't have one.
---
The GPL doesn't define what the "physical act of transferring a copy" is. It doesn't specify that the method of transfer has to be physical. It's really up to the GNU project and the FSF to define this, and they have said that it's OK (or so we are led to believe).
And personally, I think that this is a perfectly acceptable fee. Servers and bandwidth don't grow on trees. Someone has to pay for them. So why shouldn't they be able to charge a fee for the use of these things if they want to?
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
I agree that their implementation needs some work. However, if you think of it as you paying for their servers and bandwidth, then maybe you should pay every time you download it from their site. If you don't want to pay every time, archive a copy locally after you get it.
However, I don't agree with you that this should be a donation instead of a fee. If you make it optional, they're back to the same point where hardly anyone's going to pay them. Sure, if they make it easier to donate, they'll prolly get a little more money, but I don't think it will be a significant increase. Do you donate money to every organization that develops free software that you download? I know I don't.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
It's paying for the work of aggregating the various programs into a distro, running servers to host it, and having bandwidth to allow you to download it. If you don't like it, you can go put your own distro together, but personally I'd rather pay someone else $15 to do it for me.
In addition, what is your authority to say that this is a clear breach of the GPL when the FSF has said otherwise? I think they have slightly more authority when it comes to the GPL than you do.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
I would say yes. But it might depend on whether or not they copyright the ISO image. It's also possible that the FSF told them "Sure, you can do this. But if someone else downloads it and then posts it themselves, on their own hardware and bandwidth, you really can't say anything."
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
They're not charging for the GPL'd work of others. They're charging for packaging that work into a distribution. And they're charging for the cost of their servers to host it, and the cost of the people to maintain those servers, and the cost of the bandwidth. Those servers and bandwidth aren't free, and I don't see money coming in from anywhere else to support them.
You're still free to go and get the GPL'd works yourself and put them together into your own distribution.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
I hope you're joking, since that's very illegal.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
When were people turned towards libranet? Libranet doesn't have a huge following- the big question is will this alienate their audience? I don't know; does anyone here actually use libranet? Does this piss you off?
-bugg
It seems fair enough that they ask a small price to cover some of their expenses. I have and do pay for "distributions" like this.
If you don't want to have to pay for the download find someone else that has the CD and copy it. Then put that copy on the internet. The GPL does protect your right to do that.
Ian
Normally, I don't respond to AC's - I feel if you don't care enough to log in, I don't care enough to respond. However, you raise a good point.
/, crew are considering using the metamoderation data to filter moderators, and considering how bad moderation has become, I feel this is a good thing.
/. is under a continuing DDoS attack, and the fact that it is based around troll posts rather than ICMPs or SYNs doesn't change that fact.
The way I see it, either a) the tags are meaningless or b) they aren't. Now, if the moderation tags are meaningless, then why have them? Why not just have +1, 0, -1?
If there is some reason to have the tags, it is so that, eventually, Taco et. al. can use that extra data. I feel that if moderators are incorrectly filing a moderation, then that should be noted so that the system can identify the poor moderators and remove them. Even Taco himself, in IRC, has stated that the
Now, to judge by how certain moderators have been moderating my posts, I think my comment has touched a nerve among the trolls. I think they realise that an improvement in the moderation system's selection of moderators would remove them from the view of the public, and without public visibility, they will fade away.
Therefor, while the moderation and metamoderation FAQs may disagree with me, I feel they are in error.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Perhaps it's losing my DSL line, perhaps I don't get out enough, but until this story I'd never even heard of these guys.
However, asking people for money isn't a problem. After all, that's how RMS funded much of his work: asking people to pay him to punch Emacs off to a tape for them. They COULD have downloaded it, or found somebody with a tape and copied it.
However, does anybody have any personal experience with these guy's distro?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Paid for who's work? They are selling the work of others who licensed it to them on the condition that they could not charge for it like this. Even the basis for the charge is completely bogus. They charge based on a physical media cost, under the assumption that only broadband users can download which is supposed to garner sympathy. What the heck kind of philosophy is this? They are in clear breach of the GPL. At best I could see them being allowed to charge IF the charge was based on the admin & network costs for their server. Anyone who contributed to any part of their distro could have serious objections to this abuse of their copyright works.
I think this is a great idea. This is based on tipping or micropayments and even has a strong historical precedent. The FSF received money selling GNU software on media. This supported Stallman for a long time.
:)
I think that their implementation has some flaws though. It should not REQUIRED. This should be optional (what if I have already paid during a previous download). The amount of $ for a donation should also be optional.
If you really think about it... it IS the Internet and your download mechanism is very easy to circumvent. They are called mirrors.
Kevin
... you are bringing up a problem which already has a solution. You just deal with it. You will NEVER get 100% efficiency. Witness "software piracy".
A good Zen koan "The best way to control you flock is to let them roam free."
Your community will not donate at 100% but this is fine. The Free Software community has done JUST FINE withouth 100% code contributions, not everything is synchronous.
Kevin
I see KDE 1.2 screenshots ..... obviously they're not exactly cutting edge
What they are asking is within their rights under the GPL. BUT there is also nothing wrong with someone paying for the software, downloading it, and then posting it on their own ftp site for FREE access, or burning cdroms and passing them out at the next install-fest. Once someone obtains ANY GPL software, they have the RIGHT to re-distribute it ANY WAY they WANT.
So in a strict sense, what they are asking might not work. I hope if their distro is a good one that people will pay for it so they will continue to upgrade and improve it. But they better not complain if 'pirate' copies of this get passed around. Under the GPL there ARE NO pirate copies!
Sure, Libranet tries to save some money by charging a download fee and what do you do? Post their website on Slashdot. Better make that price $20 now. :p
Or something like that, anyway. You lose, thank you for playing.
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
If I buy a GPLed app, and then get the source code as per the GPL, am I permitted to redistribute the BINARIES or only the source?
If only the source, does that mean that if I wanted to distribute binaries of the software, would I need to recompile and repackage the software myself?
This would seem to me to be the case, am I wrong?
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
Libranet is located in my home town (Vancouver, BC). I should be able to bring my laptop computer and somehow copy the image from their machine(s) without charge (as per the GPL).
If anybody who has any of their code in their distro (any of you Debian contributors out there) requests it, I will make a personal appearence at their office and request a free copy of their distro and let you know if they refuse. I will also make the image available to anybody else with an interest.
I believe that these guys should get some cash for their work, but that they should not get anything for other people's work. When you look at it, installation and configuration is much less than 1% of the work that is involved in creating a distribution (it's just that the actual writing of the software was done long enough ago that it isn't immeadiately apparent that was "involved" in the creation of the distro).
Daniel Tarbuck
Yes, that is true.
One good way of getting around this is to copyright the formatting on the CD-ROM, but not necessarily the *software* on it. I believe that one of the *BSD distro's did this (openBSD?). They would not offer the CD to be downloaded, and they copyrighted the orginization of the programs on the CD.
Very thin line, I agree, but one that I believe rightly exists.
I think it is nothing evil to want to be compensated for your efforts. I doubt this will generate an income worthy of mentioning for this company, but they can at least try. I'll just stick to my great, trustworty Debian Sid GNU/Linux.
Tyler Durden (sp?) would be ashamed of you.
One fallacy that I believe has swept through the linux community (probably with some commercial distributions intentions) is that some distros will support hardware X great, another will support hardware Z really not so well.
99.9% of the code base that each distribution pulls from is *exactly* the same (if you disregard which version is put into which distribution).
I suggest finding a distro you like (*cough*Debian*cough*) and look through some online documentation. The linux USB project http://www.linux-usb.org has some information about what USB devices currently have support.
So, instead of relying only on what comes bundled with a commercial linux distribution, perhaps looking at the actual programs that the distribution is saving you from having to mess with and/or configure, you can get your specific hardware setup.If they copyrighted the disk formatting (as I mentioned in my post here, no, that would not be legal. If they copyrighted the arrangement of programs on the CD, by reselling, say, a .iso, you would be violating that copyright.
IANAL.
Why don't we start a collection to take "ourselves" to court? We could take donations to pay for the court costs and attorney's fees (pro bono anyone?) to challenge the GPL by two parties who are not MSFT-beholden?
That way we could settle the issue amicably without threatening the GPL directly.
Who wants to volunteer to be the litigants?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Most Napster users were fans of Windows. Napster never made a Linux client (that I am aware of). Sacrificing karma to put the Napster-Linux connection in its proper perspective.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
We shouldn't expect to own the software we buy either, right.
We should... RENT it from Microsoft, right?
Well, I guess you are too young to remember the position that MSFT had on RENTING software about, oh, 15 years ago.
What was that you were saying about hypocrite?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Why don't we start a collection to take "ourselves" to court? We could take donations to pay for the court costs and attorney's fees (pro bono anyone?) to challenge the GPL by two parties who are not MSFT-beholden?
That way we could settle the issue amicably without threatening the GPL directly.
Who wants to volunteer to be the litigants?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
hmmm.. not quite..
'libre' means free as in "the bathroom is free"
'gratis' means free as in "this beer is free"
i suspect the 'libra' used here is more closely
tied to it's latin (?) roots..
:)
-- "This is my sig... there are many like it but this one is mine"
Libranet makes a *very* nice front end to Debian GNU/Linux. It's worth every penny they charge. A satisfied 1.8, 1.9 Libranet User.
Windows is not secure.
Why not just buy a Pinto?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Wrong. A collection can be copyrighted even if the stuff is public domain.
For example, classical music is public domain, but I can still sue you for copying my collection because the order of the songs is actually a secret code.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Then explain why the FSF charges $5,000 for CDS of custom compiled software? Or why does RedHat charge $1000+ for their enterprise server package if they are only allowed to charge for distribution? How could the FSF promote charging for services if you can only charge for distribution? And speaking of services, that would be for the exact copy yoor distributor uses, siuce that's the one they know best.
Incidentally...
People don't protect people that's the whole point. Cops get there too late, cops use a legal loophole so that they're never responsible for failing to protect, people steal, people attack, people rape, etc. Guns are simply tools and can be used to attack or to defend.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Yikes a self-correcting /.er! What's this world coming to?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Even the god-among-men ESR thinks that Open Source does not mean that one has to forgo monetary considerations.
Pay these people their money and get on with your life.
------
That's just the way it is
Very good point. Of course, if the GPL is intended to be interpretted to be compatible with the OSD, I think they'd almost (but not quite) have to allow for an ISO to be merely a compilation rather than a derived work.
The iso may contain copyrighted stuff that you do not have a license to redistribute. Maybe it's as little as a "thanks for buying xxx distro" readme. That's enough to mean you can't redistribute it.
The OpenBSD ISO images are copyrighted. It's a way to bring in a little money. Someone else could make a new one, but it's more trouble than the bare bones duplicaters like cheapbytes.com want to go through.
The GPL only applies to the GPL'd code. Nothing is to stop Libranet from including non-GPL code on the distribution. If Libranet includes something which they have an exclusive license to (it could even be a poem by the CEO's daughter), then they can prohibit you from redistributing that.
You are, of course, free to take the GPL'd programs and make your own ISO, but you cannot necessarily redistribute their ISO.
Consider this from http://www.openbsd.org/faq/obsd-faq.txt:
3.1.2 - Does OpenBSD provide an ISO image available for download?
You can't. The official OpenBSD CD-ROM layout is copyright Theo de
Raadt, as an incentive for people to buy the CD set. Note that only
the layout is copyrighted, OpenBSD itself is free. Nothing precludes
someone else to just grab OpenBSD and make their own CD.
Of course, OpenBSD isn't under the GPL, but the same thing would seem to apply. The location of the files, or the release notes, or whatever, is not a derived work from GPL'd code, so it doesn't have to be redistributable.
It is not a physical transfer, it is an electronic transfer. Physical transfer is disk, CD etc.
I disagree. Before the download, the data did not exist on your disk. Afterwards, it did. Information was transferred, even if the only thing that moved was some electrons.
I think it would be perectly OK for them to charge more for pre-compiled, pre-packaged binary distribution, as long as the source for GPL'd code is available at a very nominal price. But, IANAL.
--
--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
You would think that until you sit in a Starbucks for a couple minutes.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
The nerve of these guys! Getting paid for work?! Who do they think they are?!
I was in a Starbucks the other day and got a large cappucino - it was half foam. Borders has a real cappucino for $3.40 that is full to the top with 3 (count 'em: 3) shots of espresso. Screw Starbucks.
Or us pansies who want to drink the coffee in a coffee house where there are girls...get it?
Someone is paying way too much for their coffee!
I hit 50 karma and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt
.sig"?
Shouldn't that be: "I hit 50 karma and all I got was this lousy
echo $email | sed s/[A-Z]//g | rot13
Well, no. ;)
Libra in spanish means pound, so I think the name is well put
I have paid for several distros and am happy to pay a fair price to support my favorite. I just bought a copy of Mandrake and Slackware this weekend because I needed some features of both. I am even more likely to buy something that comes with source code. I believe in free code, but not free beer. (Someone has to pay for the beer).
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
OK, I wasn't trolling when I wrote this...I was just asleep.
:)
I saw the article, I checked out Libranet's site and I was a little taken back/confused by their free/not free business model. Of course they can charge whatever they want...but everyone else who wants to charge me for Linux at least puts it on a physical medium for me, possibly even with a dead tree to keep it company. This was the first time I've ever seen anyone charging for downloading a distro...and then I posted a dumb question on Slashdot and started getting flamed.
OK, here's the obligatory argument - no matter how you justify it or how much you might feel you deserve it, can you legally charge people for the GPL'd work of others ?
Once you buy the binary, it's yours to do with as you please. So you can redistribute it, modify it, do whatever you like.
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Why whine about them? If they want to NOT be used by me, then they can charge 15 bucks a cd image. So what? I'll just download Debian! This is just a excuse for them to do what Red Hat already does, except they are not selling CD's at Walmart. Why don't they just make some CD's and sell them online for those who don't have a broadband connection? That would make more sense to me! Don't they realize that someone could just as well pay the 15 bucks, then upload the image to another server and charge nothing for it? The Kernel developers have made money with their work by getting jobs at the distros, but I bet there are still a good chunk who work on Kernel code just for the heck of it. There are millions of developers who have not gotten money for what Libranet is ditributing. Is Libranet going to pay them? What about the Debian developers that made Libranet possible?? Is Libranet going to pay them?? Nope. Libranet is putting a HUGE nail right in their foot. May as well say goodbye to Libranet. If I want a nice to use Debian based distro, I'd choose Progeny or heck Debian! It's NOT hard if you know a bit about your computer to install Debian. What you need to know takes 5 minutes to figure out.
Gorkman
They worked hard to put all that software in one place for you to download. All that software that was created and given away for free by people who didn't have to worry about paying the bills or buying equipment or bandwidth or getting recognition, or teaching others how to use it or helping others when they had problems, or filing bugs and giving feedback and support, or anything like that. Give a little credit where credit is due. Pay libranet.
You can charge whatever you like in regards to the product you sell, if it is GPL. The requirement is that you distribute the source. If you only sell the product with the source, you're fine. Otherwise, you have to provide a method to someone to get the source. I'm under the impression if you sold a binary-only version of anything, you'd have to provide the source for cost-of-duplication only to those who requested it, but the availability of the source is the key proviso.
The other thing you overlooked is that the GPL prevents you from restricting redistribution, which means the first person to get a copy of the source could then retransmit it for much less.
Yes, but they have the right to modify and redistribute it with the same (GPL) license - you can control who gets it, but not what they do with it.
The part you're quoting is the part which guarantees the user the source to the binary - so you can't say that the program is $50 and the source $5000.
The GPL has no restrictions whatsoever on price of the binary - you can charge whatever you like.
Another issue many don't understand: You have to own the binary to have a claim to the source.
The GPL does not say that you have a right to get anything for free: It just says that you have a right to the source if you get the program, that changes are GPL as well if you distrbute them and that you can redistribute the program freely with the same license.
So if someone sold a high priced 3D package and GPLed it, you couldn't demand that they give it to you or put it on the web - you could ask another one who already bought it to give to you, but if you don't have the program, you have no claim.
I just recently got broadband access. I remember many times I would let my computer download hundreds of megs of warez and mp3s overnight and during the day while I was gone. If someone really wanted to get the iso on a slow connection they could. Of course, those without CD Burners are also at a disadvantage.
What Libranet is ignoring is the fact that, while they may have the latest and greatest whizbang disto out there, they are not perceived as head and shoulders above the free distros. I have no idea what they offer that Mandrake doesn't, for example. More to the point, they'll be available on Cheap Bytes or linuxiso.org in a matter of days or weeks anyway, so where is the value-add in paying them for their work? Sorry, guys, you fail the free market test.
Also we think it unfair that only those users with fast connections can download CD images.
I just finished downloading a 648Mb image of the Mandrake 7.2 CD. It took the better part of two days, but I managed it with a 56K modem and an ordinary phone line connected to a P3 running Windows 2000. Ordinarily, I can't manage a 10Mb download without some kind of time-out and failure, but now I have a secret weapon.
The secret weapon is a program called GetRight, which basically handles all the downloading, allowing segmented downloads and a manual resume facility. I needed to resume four times, three times because my ISP disconnected me, and once because I was installing some other software and had to reboot. The download worked without a hitch, however, and I'm looking forward to finally getting Linux up on my PC tonight.
Note: this is not a paid advertisement. The product is good enough that I'll trumpet it without any inducement whatsoever. Any Windows user who doesn't have it obviously isn't interested in downloading stuff.
: Fruitbat :
I have discovered a truly remarkable
We people in the Thirs World cannot pay $15 that easily. $15 == around 50 cups of coffee. (good coffee)
;)
It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't understand this simple point. How do you think Linux Mall, Cheap Bytes and others can sell RedHat, Suse, etc. for $1.50, even though they did not create it? Like he says, they could just as easily charge a million, there's nothing illegal there, yet people can't make the connection.
It's Free, not free software. You can do (almost) whatever you want with it. You can sell it, change it, give it to friends, you just can't keep it to yourself if you distribute anything based on it.
Free Online Woodworking Resources Directory
So I go pay them $15, and turn around and place the exact same download on my own server, but only charge $5.
Perfectly legal, right?
Therein lies the rub. GPLing a piece of software effectively drives its cost to $0. No matter how high or low you charge for it, there'll be someone who bought it and has access to the source who can charge less and someone further down the chain who can charge even less until we get to the last link in the chain who will allow it free to be downloaded or at cost of distribution media.
If I was one of the Libranet developers I'd simply stop distributing the software if it costs them that much to distribute it. No one says you can't hack GPLed code on your own, as long as the people they give it to can access the source they should have no problems. Heck, I just spoke to someone who is hacking C99 compliance into gcc and as long as all the people he gives the binary to (i.e. no one) have access to the source he doesn't have to deal with having to pay excessive bandwidth costs, people complaining about bugs or lack of features, complaints about potential GPL violations, Slashdot editors questioning his motives, etc. All he has to worry about is hacking the code, which what it's all about anyway.
Is it just me, or are there a little too many people discussing why this linux distro should or should not be allowed to be sold for download. Other people have mentioned the licenceing issues, so I won't bother going into that. There are a million and one linux distros out there, so whats the big deal if a few of them charge a few bucks.
The good ones will still remain free (I won't mention them, because of the all so reoccuring distro wars). And it bothers me, as so many other distro's do the same, on the libranet screenshots page, they have just a bunch of screens of gnome and E. Whats so special about this particular distro that would bother people that they started chargeing people to download it. Eg: redhat has the user friendly gui installer in 7.0 along with other releases, something that that company developed on their own that makes that product special. Libranet claims to have a simple installer, but do they show it? no. To me its just ADBD (another debian based distro)
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
As has been pointed out by others, it's just fine to charge for transmission costs, whether that cost be time, materials & postage for a physical copy or bandwidth charges for a downloaded copy. Similarly, they're not saying you can't copy it and put it up yourself - if you have lots of available bandwidth that someone doesn't mind you using, go ahead, the licensing allows that.
-- fencepost
fencepost
just a little off
If they can make cash off of it, then I say more power to Corel.. oops. I meant Libranet.
Ideally, you want to fill your pipe to the brim without actually overflowing and incurring penalty costs (assuming the bandwidth isn't capped), especially if your business model is charging for supporting those downloads.
If you're not expecting to make money off supporting those downloads, why are you allowing them to be dowloaded for free? (not counting that it might be part of a "free updates" scheme but then the downlaods have already been paid for)
Rich
Wrong. Read the GPL. If they include GPLd code, the GPL forces them to provide the result (and its source code) for the cost of distribution, otherwise they are violating the license under which the GPLd code was given to them.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
See above.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Libranet sounds great--this is the first time I've heard of it. But what if it is no better than the others? (Mandrake, Corel, SuSE, etc.) I've only got two ways to find out:
- Download their previous version for free and try it out. But if it has problems that the new release fixes, how will I know?
- Pay $15 to find out if their latest and greatest is everything they say it is. But what if it's not? What if I should have just stayed with something that was obtainable for free?
I'm not at all opposed to paying for Linux, if it's reasonable. But with so many variables, I'd be reluctant to purchase it before I tried it on my system. I wonder if this solution will work for them, or if they should have taken a "shareware" approach. Which will make them more money: curiosity before the sale or honesty afterward?--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
The iso uses GPL'ed code, and hence is also covered by the GPL. That's why it's called a "viral license," because it infects everything it comes in contact with.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Remember what Richard Stallman says: "The `free' in `free software' refers to freedom, and not price". If paying for bandwidth is an issue, it's reasonable (IMHO) to pay a small fee. I'd much rather do this than see another Linux-based business fall.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Let the buyer decide if it's worth it. If so, Libranet stands to make some cash. If the buyer doesn't think so, oh well. As for my own personal preference... I'll stick with Mandrake--weekly updated iso images available for download. Price? $0.
Tell me, have you used Debian? Perhaps you are not a troll, but merely ill-informed. So:
/etc/apt.sources, change "potato" to "woody", and:
When I install an RPM, it is a toss of the coin whether it will decide to keep my configuration files, or move them to "foo.config.rpmsave", possibly disrupting my services. I have to list the files in the RPM to figure out where they stuck the config files, and go edit them by hand.
When I do "apt-get install postgresql", it asks the necessary questions WHEN IT INSTALLS, with a nice graphical (or text; you set this preference when you install debconf [generally when you install the distro]) menu system. My roommate runs postgresql, and he really doesn't know how to add users to it, because Debian helped him do it once, and that was it.
Upgrading is great. Apt will ALWAYS ask what to do when a question of config files comes up; you can keep yours (theirs will be installed as foo.config.dpkg-dist), take the new one, show differences in the two, or background the process to do whatever you need. Also, anyone who does this:
apt-get update; apt-get upgrade
every few days will be up-to-date on their security and bug fixes; no need to read mailing lists, go download RPMs, and pray that they install correctly, having to resolve any package conflicts YOURSELF. Apt will resolve all dependencies, hold back on upgrades for certain reasons when called for, etc.
And when a new version is released, you simply edit
apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade.
Your distribution is upgraded while it runs. All services which might need to be restarted will be after the upgrade is complete.
The reason Debian is so easy is because nearly everything under the sun is "in Debian"; ie, you don't have to go hunting for it, you can fire up a nice graphical apt front-end like GnomeAPT or aptitude, browse through the packages, and have it install whatever you need (again, automatically resolving dependencies and versions). Porting apt to RPM will not necessarily fix this, nor will any of the pretty tools which are beginning to emerge. All of the 4,000+ packages in Debian are strictly controlled so that they will work together. THAT is the "secret". Until RPMs are unified like this, they will be hopeless.
I would never recommend anything else to a newbie.
Sotto la panca, la capra crepa
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Almost every poster who's posted to this story (at least the 'top level' comments seems to think that GPL means 'Cannot Charge Money(TM)'. False. GPL only ONLY means that you cannot stop whoever gets their hands on it from doing what they like with it, short of removing the GPL. That's it. I could go download RedHat Linux, and sell it for one million dollars a copy if I really wanted to. The GPL seems to have been designed to a) keep code free and b) encourage payment by means other than monetary; i.e. by contributing more code, but it certainly does not preclude charging money. How do you think Stallman himself lived for a while? Anybody who can't understand why these guys want money have obviously never tried running a public site. Geocities doesn't count. Neither does apache on your 1337 Linux box behind a cable modem. Go price a T1 sometime.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Step 1. Make Linux Distribution
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Big Profit
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
As the HHGTTG says, Don't Panic! They are, basically, enforcing a charge for using their bandwidth. There is nothing they can legally do to stop people from setting up free (as in money) mirrors.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
The physical act of transferring a copy includes electronic transfer.
--
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
well, imho open source was a way for people who *had* some jobs to release their work to the world so that others would not block out their creative source and profit from it.. I think one of the weakness of this is that it does not prevent others from profiting from it as long as the source is bundled. So people like libranet are justified in their extra work in collecting latest sources and charging for it..
"You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee"
If this is considered a 'physical transfer' then they have a point.
It is not a physical transfer, it is an electronic transfer. Physical transfer is disk, CD etc.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Not being very ideologically inclined, I'd pay for some real added value -- like maybe proprietary rewrite of X that I can stand to look at all day -- even if they didn't GPL it. Open source is important, but so are my eyes.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I disagree. I wouldn't mind paying a small fee for a good product. I think Linux users and other OSS advocates are more willing to support each other than you seem to think. I guess we'll see.
--
all i know is that, if i ever create my own linux distro, i'm absolutely going to charge for it. they managed to take a small, virtually unknown distro, and generate a *huge* amount of traffic and discussion... i dare say that they got more out of the publicity than they'll get from the $15 fee.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
--The Sphinx
Okay, maybe I'm getting paranoid...blame M$ for that. But when someone starts saying their product is the latest and greatest, it makes me both curious and nervous.
I don't mind paying for a good, rock-solid distro, but I don't feel compelled to be on the bleeding edge. And I learned (the hard way) about slapping an OS package on a machine and expecting it to perform as advertised without some testing and comparison. I'd like to see how this runs and compares side-by-side with Red Hat, Debian and SuSE boxen. If...if...it runs and compiles and does OS stuff at least as well as any one of the other major distros, yes, I'll sink money into it. But I've been bitten by blindly believing claims before, and that's made me twice shy.
So USD15 isn't all that much. I've spent several times more than that on OS packages in the last six months. But if it's going onto a production machine, I want to beat on it a bit first.
I'll keep pulling .iso images for now. Thank you for your time.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
I'm not talking about their right to do this under the GPL or anything like that, about which I know nothing and care less. I'm talking about the accepted, but stupid, convention of equating mis-use of intellectual output with crimes of robbery, murder, and mayhem.
Yeah, I know it's a convention and it's understood by everyone. Yeah, I know it's losing battle to get people to stop accepting a bad usage with all its unconscious connotations. I just don't care: Improper copying simply is not piracy.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Since the GPL (apparently) allows people to re-post this for less, we'll get to see if people really will put their money where their mouth is. Assuming, of course, that LibraNet has a relatively convenient way to get the money to them. (I believe this lack of easy mechanism is what kills most shareware.)
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
OK, so people downloading their ISO for free from them is costing them too much money. They want to charge for it, but I hope they know many people are cheap and aren't going to pay.
:) when the new release is out] waiting for the download. This doesn't cost them too much since slow speed links aren't extremely high cost. But it lets people enjoy their distro for free (and therefore, perhaps, consider buying a new release later on), and keeps the whiners away.
Here's what I'd do:
- High speed (Lets say a server connected to multiple T1s, or better) download for paying users.
- Low speed (256kbps or less total bandwidth) for free.
People could sit on their low speed link for a few hours [maybe days or weeks
You want it now? Just pony up the 15 dollars and download it in 30 minutes!
Everyone wins. Or so it seems.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Hey, they could do like 94% of the other Linux distributions: CALL FOR MIRRORS.
It's a novel idea, really. Asking people like myself, with big fat, unsaturated pipes to both the commodity internet and Internet2 (really big pipe), and gigs of HD space unused on a spare box, to host a DL. Redhat wouldn't have been quite so profitable (breaking even in Linux is called profit) if all users had to DL their 2 CD set from Redhat run servers. Mandrake, king of the super distros, has a monstrous page of mirrors.
Looking over the DL page, clearly the distro has some mirrors. Why not say "Get the newest version from ibiblio.org or its mirrors"?
Sounds like a business plan based on OPP -- other people's products.
I'll host the damn iso. Email me.
No sig is worth reading.
I think that distros should be alowed to charge for the binary. But I feel that the source should be on a free server. After all, how many people can compile an entire distro? I have to ask for help when installing a RPM! Paying those few bucks will help out the bandwith.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
at least from where I sit they are /.ed hard. I wonder if they are going to try and charge Rob for the bandwidth. Very funny.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Open Source doesnt mean free, it means just that, its open. Once you have the product you are free to modify it at will, and distribute it for money yourself, as long as the scorce code is tagged along with it. But you must be doing a service, if its just a collection of other Open Source stuff you are allowed to charge a reasonable fee for cd creation and shipping (assuming you do such things, for download you cant charge squat). Or if its your orignal code, its deemed your work, thus chargable for said service.
"Out the 100Base-T port, through the router, off the bridge, past the firewall..... Nothing but Net."
Exactly! Libranet offers the iso for the previous version of their distribution for free download. So if you don't want to pay for hogging up their bandwidth to download 650mbs, you have every right to use the older version. They work hard to produce a distro that has some quality software, they have the right to charge for it. If not the physical CD then for the bandwidth necessary to let you make your own CD from their iso. It's the same as if I printed out all the sourcecode and charged you for my ink and paper. TANSTAAFL Somebody has to pay somewhere.
I have been trying to change my home computer over to linux for a little while now... I still havent found a driver for my Netmate USB -> Ethernet device yet but anyways...
I have tried out maybe 4 distros so far... exactly what is it about Libranets Linux that makes me say "Hey, lemme pay 15 bucks for this distro and actually keep it"?
I dont hold store in the manufacturers hype so maybe someone here who has used it can shed some light, eh?
but I play one on Slashdot.
In any event, how long before Linux can avoid a court challenge? How much marketshare does Gates have to lose before he blatantly violates the GPL, and dares us to take him to court?
Does anybody here really think that Microsoft hasn't scrutinized the GPL with crack teams of $500/hour lawyers, and have complex legal manuevers in place, simply awaiting the perfect test case? How many of us could really take that king of legal jaggurnaut on? Is he simply waiting for the Bush League to settle the Anti-Trust suit first, and then will steal some GPL code, make it obvious, be taken to court, and outspend the hapless writer of the code?
Will the GPL really stand up in a court of law? Wanna bet?
--
$tar -xvf
nothing can go free forever...everybody needs money after all.. especially those who work hard for it.
Let's say it takes me $300,000 to make my Linux distro ($200,000 for my developers and $100,000 for my internet connection to spit it out -- an exageration to be sure). I sell 5,000 copies of each distro for $30 each. I make $150,000 net.
Even if I mirrored all my connections, I'd still need $200,000 to pull even. And if we were looking at this realistically: say $50,000 to host the net connection as a percentage, then the debt becomes even more: $250,000.
The internet connection is so little of the total cost that "getting a bunch of mirrors" isn't a solution. I love it when a bunch of Linux hobbyists, who clearly don't even recognize the effort that goes forth to do this stuff, complain about paying. I just don't get it.
I pay for my RedHat distro to help the community. They can't rely only on support fees either.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Um, but is this really a model? That's like saying the dot-com/advertiser model worked (which we all know didn't). By the way, the numbers were abritrary.
The point I was trying to make (and which you seemed to argue inadvertantly and quite succinctly -- well done) is that the support model is clearly not an applicable "business model". If you backed RedHat up against a wall and said "Tomorrow, you could only make money off support. No boxed copies." (besides the fact that you get support with boxed copies anyway) they'd crumble. There is clearly not enough money to be made in the "let's give the thing away for free to everyone" model.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I agree. I even checked the distributions section of LWN and it's not listed. I consider myself a pretty knowledgable Linux person and I have no clue who these guys are.....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
It's under the "non-technical" section. Guess that explains why I never heard of it.....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Excellent Gorilla marketing. Just think of the buzz this post generated for this Distribution. Brilliant.
While I of course think that all software developers deserve to make some money, I can't see myself going out and financially supporting every single GNU/Linux distribution on the market. Someone posted yesterday about how Microsoft eventually became the de facto standard for home operating systems thru market saturation. I would think that in light of this, especially since GNU/Linux and other operating systems share such a small share of the desktop market, that any attempt to get GPLed software deployed would be beneficial to the cause. I also do not understand the logic behind mentioning that people with small modems cannot download images while broadband folks can. Should I feel guilty about my DSL?
You were right the first time.
Not only does the GPL allow you to charge whatever you like for distribution but FSF and Stallman encourage you to make as much money as you can this way and plough the profits back into Free Software. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The main point of the GPL is to make sure that Free Software stays Free. It is designed to keep the Source available down the chain. So if you distribute Binaries+Source you can charge what you like. If you you have Binary only CD or download then the cost of also acquiring the Source has to be reasonable. This is to stop someone making the cost of Source so high as to effectively restrict it again.
I'm sorry,
I thought every GPL software author was getting payed back by getting more free software. By releasing software, you exposed people to the ideals of free software, which in turn cuases most to release their works for free. The software is exposed much quicker than if you had to pay for it, which basically caused the free software explosion(people have been releasing free software for years, but not the source, so the explosion didn't happen until the GPL became popular). Once we pollute GPL software with download charges, we quickly:
Slow down the evolution of software
Cause more people to charge for their software
Cause distros to pay for included software
Compound the price
Eventually close source to prevent Stealing
Destroy this free software explosion
Become Greedy
Have the previous exponentially compound
This is NOT a good idea
Basically, Joe can sell you the source for $50, and then sell you the executable for $100. And you can't demand that he gives you the source for free either, unless you've already bought the executable from him first.
#include disclaimer.h
I can't be karma whoring - I've already hit 50!
SIG: HUP
These guys should take a flying leap. Don't they know computer people are all communists who refuse to pay for anything we can steal over the net?
Sure, I understand the need to be reimbursed for some of your costs, bandwidth isn't free neither are your servers or the upkeep thereof. BUT, and yes there is always a but, where does it end? Since you're not really developing this code, I don't really want to pay you for the code. I don't have a problem paying you for the server time/bandwidth or even for server upkeep, but when some of that money goes into your developer's pockets and none goes into the community's pockets, then I have a problem. I'm not going to argue what is and isn't permissible under the GPL, I'm going to say what I believe is right and what is wrong.
Paying you for the bandwidth/equipment/maintenance so I can download the code; Fine.
Paying your developers and paying for the bandwidth/equipment/maintenance so I can download the code while the developers who aren't your employees get nothing; Nope.
Basically, either pay everyone involved in the creation the product you're charging for, or only charge for what your out of pocket expenses for the access to your files are. At 15$ a download, I'm not convinced your communication lines and server maintenance is all we're paying you for. If you can show a cost breakdown proving that you're not shortchanging the community, then I have no problem with it.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
This is very interesting.Everyone seems to have a different take on this which means not many people seems to understand the GPL very well. I know I don't but my immediate thought was: "hey wtf! They can charge for the binaries but they have to make the source available!"
I guess I didn't realise that they don't really contribute to any programs other than to distro specific ones...
I guess all most distros do is collect GPL software, compile it and configure it.. This way, they can charge for their service..
as far as the availability of the sources, that's up to the maintainers of the individual software programs. :)
They are out there! just look at LFS
phew! I have to admit I had quite a scare when I first read the headline though.
"just connect this to..."
BZZT.
Liberty.
if they include their own proprietary progs like suse's yast, you can't do that.
"just connect this to..."
BZZT.
Liberty.
If I'm going to pay for Linux, they need to make it a hell of a lot better to get my $. I know everyone will flame me and mod me down, and that's okay. Even Mandrake is not easy enough. Why doesn't my sound work? Why doesn't my printer work?
while this company is certainly within their rights under the GPL license, they aren't doing themselves any good PR by stating the actual reason they're charging, to get paid for their work of "putting together their distribution", as oppose to the charge for copying/pressing or even a reasonable cost of bandwidth of distributing the product. are people really going to pay for this product when they're in effect forced to by the company because they need to put bread on the table? please, there's so many other distros out there... if i want to support a certain distro, i'll run to the store and buy a boxed set, or i'll send them a donation, but pay for a download. i don't think so.
I'll predict a slashdot story 6 months from now that reports libranet has went under. sorry guys, i realize everyone needs to pay the bills and all, but forcing the consumer to feed you cash for a product you took mostly from others is a little bit out in left field. if the banwidth were such an issue, those with low bandwidth (and low budgets) would go to cheapbytes and get the disk (been there, done that).
This makes sense in that they are paying for their connectivity, and could even be paying based on bandwidth used (i.e. Akamai). This is one way for them to recoup these costs. They should, however, allow mirrors to download the software for free and host free mirrors.
If not, then they shouldn't complain if someone does mirror their CD image (after paying for either the physical CD or the download). Then again, this depends on the specific licenses involved, although I would assume that their distro is fully GPLd...
by Richard Stallman
Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.
Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
The word ``free'' has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of ``free software'', we're talking about freedom, not price. (Think of ``free speech'', not ``free beer''.) Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.
Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.
Non-free programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is non-free because users don't have freedom.
Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price isn't more free, or closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.
Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to the Free Software Foundation or some other free software development project. By funding development, you can advance the world of free software.
Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!
In order to contribute funds, you need to have some extra. If you charge too low a fee, you won't have anything to spare to support development.
Will a higher distribution price hurt some users?
People sometimes worry that a high distribution fee will put free software out of range for users who don't have a lot of money. With proprietary software (18k characters), a high price does exactly that -- but free software is different.
The difference is that free software naturally tends to spread around, and there are many ways to get it.
Software hoarders try their damnedest to stop you from running a proprietary program without paying the standard price. If this price is high, that does make it hard for some users to use the program.
With free software, users don't have to pay the distribution fee in order to use the software. They can copy the program from a friend who has a copy, or with the help of a friend who has network access. Or several users can join together, split the price of one CD-ROM, then each in turn can install the software. A high CD-ROM price is not a major obstacle when the software is free.
Will a higher distribution price discourage use of free software?
Another common concern is for the popularity of free software. People think that a high price for distribution would reduce the number of users, or that a low price is likely to encourage users.
This is true for proprietary software -- but free software is different. With so many ways to get copies, the price of distribution service has less effect on popularity.
In the long run, how many people use free software is determined mainly by how much free software can do, and how easy it is to use. Many users will continue to use proprietary software if free software can't do all the jobs they want to do. Thus, if we want to increase the number of users in the long run, we should above all develop more free software.
The most direct way to do this is by writing needed free software or manuals yourself. But if you do distribution rather than writing, the best way you can help is by raising funds for others to write them.
The term ``selling software'' can be confusing too
Strictly speaking, ``selling'' means trading goods for money. Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.
However, when people think of ``selling software'', they usually imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software proprietary rather than free.
So unless you're going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term ``selling software'' and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say ``distributing free software for a fee''--that is unambiguous.
High or low fees, and the GNU GPL
Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License (20k characters) (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy.
The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code. Those who do this are required by the GNU GPL to provide source code on subsequent request. Without a limit on the fee for the source code, they would be able set a fee too large for anyone to pay--such as, a billion dollars--and thus pretend to release source code while in truth concealing it. So in this case we have to limit the fee for source, to ensure the user's freedom. In ordinary situations, however, there is no such justification for limiting distribution fees, so we do not limit them.
Sometimes companies whose activities cross the line of what the GNU GPL permits plead for permission, saying that they ``won't charge money for the GNU software'' or such like. They don't get anywhere this way. Free software is about freedom, and enforcing the GPL is defending freedom. When we defend users' freedom, we are not distracted by side issues such as how much of a distribution fee is charged. Freedom is the issue, the whole issue, and the only issue.
Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Updated: 5 Oct 2000 taz
There is no such thing as 'free speech' without 'free beer'. If you have to pay to say what you want, you don't have free speech. If you have to pay to get GNU/Linux, not eveyone can afford it and it's not free (as in libre). I know we live in a capitalist world and we need money to survive. Which is why I plan on donating to Debian and others as soon as I can afford it and contributing code/doc as soon as I have the ability (I'm learning now). But I'll never buy free software. Encourage the community, don't fall into the provider-consumer way of thinking.
Maximum linux did a review - I don't have a link, but I expect you could find it from their site. (and, being at work, I don't have the magazine handy.) They said it was excellent, as long as you followed the install directions.
-Carik
Come on, who in their right mind will pay for this? Sure I would pay 15 bucks for a CD, something physical, but 15 bucks for an ISO, F*** that.
Maybe I'm a throwback, but I don't get my coffee fromt the latest trendy coffee bar, and it certainly doesn't cost $5. If I get coffee at a restaurant at all, it's more like $0.70.
However, the vast majority of my coffee is consumed in-home, from a can, making it more like $0.10 or less to produce. That's 150 cups, which makes half a year... quite a bit more than a few.
I'm not saying it's worth it; I have no idea. However, being cheap, the only Linuxes I'd use are Slackware or Debian, and these are absolutely free. Right now, however, my flavor of the month is FreeBSD, which comes free also.
I just find it ridiculous that they would call $15 "a few cups of coffee."
A new year calls for a new signature.
You know, these people/groups/developers spend alot of time and effort writing this code. What will happen if they do not receive any reward for their contribution? Then the incentive to continue producing code wanes.
In a true community the people who receive benefit from other peoples work provide a service or benefit for that person in return. What are we, as the open source community, providing for those who write software for us?
Currently the system seems to be very similar to communism. This is not necessarily a bad thing but I would be very wary and aware of the impact of continued non-payment. I doubt that large professional software can be developed without financial support for those developing. Either the users support the developers of their own free will or traipse back down the road of copyright and consumerism.
Pinky: What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
From the General Public License:
If I have a copy of a GPL software, I can sell it or give it away at no charge. But anyone that recieve a copy have the right to give it away at no charge if they want.
That usually means that GPL software is free (gratis) or have a very low price.
I wonder what would happen if some system utilities (Installer, configueartion tools, package manager), were propietary (not GPLed). Can I sell the CDs and restrict people from making copies ? Would this be legal ?
MOD THE CHILD UP!
MOD THE CHILD UP!
English is easier. Three year old children from US can speak it. Also Canadians!
(I'm not Mexican)
MOD THE CHILD UP!
Here in New Zealand many of us pay per megabyte for internet connections. Downloading an ISO image, presumably around 650MB would cost my company around $100NZD.
Yep, and $100NZD is around USD$45, so downloading software like that is no bargain for us.
I will always buy from a local supplier who does the work of downloading and mastering the images and will produce a CD usually in my (snail) mail box with a 24 hour turnaround.
We get a pretty good rate for our internet connection too - I know other organisations would be paying around 30% - 50% above what we pay.
Actually, the electrons you send out are not the same ones the person on the other end gets - only the pattern is transmitted. This makes the internet a metaphysical system more so than old economy paper or plastic (physical) distribution.
This sounds like a very cool distribution (if it lives up to their claims) with the 2.4.2. kernel and XFree86 4.0.2. I'm currently running a RedHat 6.1 partially upgraded with 7.0 rpms, 2.4.2 (with pppoatm hacks) and XFree86 4.0.3. Considering how much it's been messed about with, it's remarkably (but not completely) stable, so I'm looking to upgrade to a properly put-together distro with similar features. Libranet sounds like it could be the ideal distribution for me and I don't mind 'donating' $15 for their trouble. Has anyone used Libranet who could comment on their experiences with it?
And remember that RMS started the FSF by selling copies of Emacs for $150 a tape. I don't consider Libranet charging one tenth of that for an entire distribution (including Emacs!) to be a bad thing at all.
HH
... Should be done through Freenet :) )
Come on, let's hear it, Distributed, Free, Secure (not yet been hacked
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
People should be given the choice to freely download a distro without extra commercial software and services or buy the whole lot. In any way changing this seems to me like properatary-ing freely-avalible software.
Just my 2c.
This sig is intentionally left blank
15dollarsforfreeproduct.net
nonlibra.net
charge.net
gosomewhereelseanddownloaditforfree.net
slackwareisbetter.net
I'm sure others could add to the list of choices.
Dan
Mojolin: The Linux Job Site
Ps if you pay more than $2 for a distro cd, you're an idiot and deserve to lose your money.
"We at libranet have come to the conclusion that it is necessary for us to get paid for our work.."
And thus, the illusion is shattered...
end communication
I think it is vital to consider the idea of getting paid for Free software (or music, or whatever). It costs very little to put a "tip jar" or a splash screen on a web site to take payments for downloads, and even if only a few people pay, it's a good start. Since so many people aren't getting paid at all for work they do in free software, what do they have to lose?
RMS and the FSF have done a good job of talking about freedom, and that's important, but someone should stand up and preach the value of paying for things that add value to your life.
Just like the GPL is mostly a social contract at this point, and hasn't been enforced by the courts, we should collectively endorse the idea of paying for Free products (heh that reads kinda funny don't it). For solidarity, if for no other reason.
I think this is the best way to battle the nascent War on Copying (just wait folks, it's coming).
"Also we think it unfair that only those users with fast connections can download CD images."
This really infuriates me. In the same breath that they _appear_ to understand what capitalism is all about, they imply that people who spend their own money for broadband connections in order to have the luxury of downloading larger files faster are somehow walking on the hands of the poor little HPBs. I'm sorry, but I work my ass off for every dollar I earn, and I choose to spend three times the cost of a 56K line in order to get broadband access to the internet.
A is A. 'Fair' doesn't enter into it.
-jfaulken
What they and other distros are charging for is convenience. I pay for convenience all the time, for everything from coffee (I could always make my own coffee) to groceries (shopping at the small local grocery instead of going to the big chain store), and I'm happy to do it or I simply wouldn't.
I get involved in contributing bits of code to open source projects and simply being an advocate for free software. I've even donated money to open source projects and I've encouraged the companies I've worked for to donate. To the company it's a token amount but for the free software project it is truly meaningful. And I am happy paying for the convenience of Red Hat CDs because they provide me with value in bundling their distro and because advocacy with one's pocketbook, in my opinion, can be as effective as advocacy from a soapbox.
Considering the amount of money I've made personally from the use of open source tools, I would even be happy to pay double or triple what they charge. Even then, it wouldn't be a fraction of I would spend if Windows were my only option.
Free software and the market economy are not mutually exclusive, and, in my opinion, history will show them to be highly complementary.
So vote with your pocketbook, folks, and give a little back to the people who give to you.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
I'd even pay some money for Mp3's of the bands I like. But with Paypal being more then little unreliable (IMHO) what is left? - I wonder why the bigger financial houses (VISA, MC, AMEX, Citibank...) haven't got their collective butts into gear and developed a micropayment solution?
--
Jon - TheSpork
Yes, they can do this. But at present they cant stop me from mirroring it for free. Now what they could also do is do what OpenBSD does, and copyright the ISO file structure, which says you cant distribute that either. But you could also take the packages and make a whole new ISO image. This is just a bad business practice, And they are hardly one of the best. They should learn from RedHat's business model, and there will always be Debian
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
I don't think that forbidding people from copying your .iso image would be enforcable and, in a worse case scenario, could actually be seen as an act of software piracy.
If in doubt readers are advised to actually read the GPL.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I would certainly try, if the means were available and I had the money available.
Donations to Debian, the ACLU, the EFF, etc. are all on my purchase list as soon as I get enough disposable income.
--Jo Hunter
--Jo Hunter
Smile! It makes them wonder what you're up to.
Think about that the next time you're wondering where your download money will come from.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
Just 'modify' program by changing timestamp of zip or iso-file and you have modified program which you can redistribute.
From my point of view, i want mandrakesoft to keep producing Linux-Mandrake. They need money to do that, so I'm not going to mis-quote the GPL to avoid paying them money for a product which is worth it.
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There are too many distro's anyways, so that's what Libranet should have done; i.e. start with the debian base distro installation, then buy our copyrighted non-GPL enhancements and install on top of the base.
As near as I can tell Red Hat, SuSE, Debian and Slackware are as unique as linux gets; the rest are just enhancements on these basic distro. If you took all of them; installed on different partitions, then piped the find thru diff, you would see how little difference their really is (or isn't).
If more than lip service was paid to the Linux Standards Base; one or more CDs would have the LSB, the rest the unique stuff. Now all of the distros are working their tails off on the same stuff; I thought the idea was to Not re-invent the wheel each time!
It would help developers too; I have been trying to get GnuCash to install for weeks now, sure it works on the developers machine with old developement libraries all over the disk, just try it on a clean installation.
Now if libranet was really different, say versions of the whole thing compiled with full Athalon or Pentium III Optimisation say all of the way down to the libraries and utilities, that would be a whole different critter. Let them download the base for free, just make the pipe real skinny say a 2.9Kb/s per user, then people would buy the distro.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
its funny though that a few years back when every one had dialup, no problem to download it for free!
.kb
still worth it though-- everyone needs to make a living somehow...and if you like it, support it--
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
Fucking morons.
whaats appended mean??????/??
After getting publicity for their reluctant decision to charge we will be reading a week later about their decision not to charge.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Seems to me that this is sorta against what debian is about (this is a debian based system right?)... Anywho why use this debian when you can use the *real* thing for free?
Talking about downloading the ISO and mirroring it for free? My goodness, are some of you people just looking to pick a fight with the world?
These guys went out and got the approval of the FSF to do this, and are not asking for that much money.
Pick your fights somewhere else. There are much bigger threats to the Linux world than a small disto wanting to charge for downloads.
Good luck getting Linux users to pay. I hate to say it, but Linux users don't pay for software if they can get a comparable product for free.
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Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
I had not heard of Libranet until this /. posting. Does anyone know how it compares to Progeny?
Thanks.
Regards,
infernix
They work hard on an open source product, then they ask people to pay for it. It seems fair to me but I seem to remember some vauge statement in the GNU, GPL, whatever saying that they had to make the downloads free.. I'm not really sure, i'm not a lisence frreak.. If I can use it and poke the source once in a while i'm happy.
Or are they allowing copying for free, just not download?
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
At least with red hat, it also comes with tech support, and technicly you are paying $1000 for tech support. They say if you d/l this for free then there is no tech support, maybe that is the way that that you can make money with the GPL
Never put off till tommarow what you can avoid all together.
It seems that the community needs to get back to it's roots (not their Super User Accounts).
On reading the Gnu Manifesto and early interviews with RMS, it is quite clear to even the stupid that he never intended free software to return no monetory reward to anyone involved. He even went so far as to suggest a Tax for all computer users in order to fund software development.
Any distribution has a right to charge for their distribution. They have made certain modifications and improvement, tht may not be part of the core Gnu/Linux system, plus an easy install process, if you are lazy or not to bright, and feel that the easy install process and extra tools are worth $15 measly bucks they are charging then buy the damn thing. If not then no problem.
My Gnu/Linux system is built entirely from scratch from source downloaded from the net and guess what guys. Linux is still free.
I have never tried libranet's product but obviously if you care, then you think it's a good one. If no one ever gives these poor guys any money, they will not be here tomorrow to deliver tomorrows products.
Catch a wake up to the economic reality of this capitilistic society. A guys gotta eat.
But they can't restrict anyone who paid the $15 from putting the files on another ftp mirror for free download to everyone else.
ipv6 is my vpn
Never heard of them.
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
They might have to change their name... "Libranet" just doesn't sound correct anymore.
here in NZ with my cable connection, I get 400Mb of free international traffic. then I pay just under 20 cents per Mb. so assuming in one month, the only international traffic I do is download this, I would have to pay NZ$35 in addition... or if I had already used my int. quota, I'd have to fork out NZ$115 plus US$15. I could order the CD for less, or I could go to a local shop and buy a distro like slackware for NZ$50. while I agree with them, it's not something that will work globally.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
They are just charging for the bandwidth used to send out the copies. You can pay to download a copy and set up your own mirror if you want. At least a mirror of anything GPLed in their distro.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I don't think the GPL says that you can redistribute the ISO images. I think it merely says that you can get the sources for the GPL'ed binaries that are on the ISO images (there may be others). You can then use those to make your own ISO images, which are very unlikely to be identical to the original ISO images.
Sure, they can probably do this; it seems to be in compliance with the GPL. RedHat and others may even try to go down the same road (and with for-pay updates, they are). But my guess at this point is that their business model isn't going to work. But, hey, that's part of a free market: people try differnt things. Some of them work and some of them don't. If they figure how to add sufficient value to their services, they'll make it, and we'll all win.
If people do pay for stuff where a comparable free product exists, it's for opportunity cost: somebody paying for some commercial system may not know that some particular free system would solve his problems just as well, or it may be too costly to actually get a hold of (e.g. download) the free product.
The source is freely available to anyone who wants to pay for it -- it is in a nice leather bound dead tree (paper only, no media). Total shipping weight 50lbs or so and total cost in the range of 30k or so (very nice binding, only the best paper, hand packed).
The most common format for data transfer today is paper and ink.
It may violate the spirit of the agreement but not the terms of it.
What do you expect? They have to make money somehow.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Excellent point about the bandwidth issue. If Libranet wants to (shock of shocks) actually get paid for the service it provides, perhaps a p2p solution such as Mojo Nation is the way to go. At the very least their bandwidth problem is diminished while setting themselves up with a Pay Lars-style tip jar.
[Insert the usual disclaimer here]
Howdy, I have bought several copies of SuSE so I feel fairly justified in "abbusing them" for later "free" complete upgrades. I've never bothered with downloading the ISO images anyway, as that it a tad shotgun-ish. I just do the boot-floppy and FTP install thing....
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
actually,goatsex (this is for free) makes perfect sense. The code is free, but what about the people who package it, the cost of maintaining servers to distro it from. A linux distro that you get for free is one of the few things that is worth more than you pay for it in this world. To actually compensate the people who make that free distro available to you for their actual costs is only good economics. Try to get support from corel for their "free" distro, them try to get support for corel linux, deluxe release FEEL THE DIFFERENCE (both corel distros IMO are great for linux newbies) at $15 from libranet I feel reasonably safe in saying its "cheap at twice the price" Penguin_Boi
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. Robert Nesta Marley
Doesn't this like defeat the whole idea of being open source free ware???
No wonder, considering how often some people change their login.
I think the fact that they offer the previous version for free should be enough to keep people from complaining. The fact is, bandwidth cost money, especially the kind of volume involved in transfering CD images. Distributors take a big risk in creating distributions and providing them to the general public, especially when they are pouring money into such a project. I see them totally justified in asking for money in exchange for a service. If someone really wanted the software and didn't want to pay for it, they could acquire it by other means, and do so legally. Comparing Microsoft to a Linux distributor (let us be reminded that Linux is not a single entity, but distributors may be considered such) holds very little ground. Microsoft could offer their operating systems for free to non-business individuals and they would probably profit even more. Linux isn't about market dominance or the market at all. I think these Linux distributors were in the situation where they realized "hey, if we don't have any income, we can't afford to exist." I'd never spend $15 on coffee, though.. I don't touch the stuff. Nilesh
While I think that Libranet is a fine and competent Linux distro, there's no way in hellfire and damnation I'm going to pay them fifteen bucks for the privilege of downloading their product. What's next? Linux companies announcing they are modifying the Linux source code beyond recognition and licensing it under a new, proprietary license.... This is getting pretty damn ridiculous.