Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DrDOS Inc Breaking GPL

Posted by Hemos on from the bad-news-bears dept.

Bob Dobbs writes "DR-DOS 8.1 (DrDOS Inc) came out at the begining of this month, however instead of an upgrade to DR-DOS 8.0 the new product is based on work available on the internet. The work includes shareware utilities, a badly patched version of the kernel work by Udo Kuhnt, drivers (Samsung, ESS) and utilities from FreeDOS and others (e.g. pkzip). Full information on the FreeDOS site. (Cheers FreeDOS!)"

3 of 460 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is bad? by Ancil · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Actually, if you read the FreeDOS page, the FreeDOS author only requests that Dr. DOS Inc. do something about complying with the GPL. i.e. He's asking them to...
    Yes, and the movie and record companies are only asking that you comply with their licenses. Ie, they're asking you to pay for the content you're consuming so they can pay their workers to produce more of said content.

    Perhaps it's only ok to demand compliance when the license is GPL?

  2. Re:Jumping the Gun by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You are an ignoranus. They oughtta be happy all we're doing is telling people about it and yipping it on blogs and poor excuses of news sites (yah, that means you /. ).

    Now, what would $company do if they found out parts of their stuff was on their software distribution? Microsoft? Apple? Macromedia? nVidia? Epic? Creative? Promise?

    Really, do you think they'd give "freebie time" to fix the problem? HELL NO. Take it off NOW or we sue you for statutory copyright damages. Hmm.. $100000 dollars not enough? Try that per copy if willfully knowing infringed.

    So you sir, can shut the fuck up.

    --
  3. GPL has no street cred/ software value plummets by HellYeahAutomaton · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    People make equivocations that GPL, Open Source, and public domain are precisely the same thing; and assume that is all FREE-as-in-beer.

    If I had a brilliant idea on how to make money off of dumb people "giving" their software away for free and not give them I cut of course I would! Its kind of like a modern day Robin Hood thing.

    If you want to see the GPL be an effective means of licensing, there will need to be more legal strongarming....otherwise all of this complaining will be seen roughly the same as a prostitute claiming rape. (Sure, it could happen, but who cares?)

    As a related note, I believe fully that the open sourcing of software has brought its value down, and along with it the value of the labor taken to create it (outsourcing to India for example). "Joe Sixpack" wants free software no matter how he can get it, if he can find it for free. "Joe Sixpack Linux Convert" will take software and have no guilt for the piracy. The results are the same; both Joes are cheap bastards, but the feelings are slightly different.

    Why should anyone pay for software when there are people out there who just want to give it away? Why should people pay for labor when the results are FREE? The answers to these questions are why IT and software professionals are currently in a race to the bottom.