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Intel Invests in TurboLinux
OUSpirit writes "I saw this over at Netscape's Technews site. Evidently, Intel (and some other companies) just invested some major bucks in TurboLinux to put them on more equal footing with RedHat. They plan to use the money to expand management and development staff.
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They say they want to add proprietary software into their distro. I don't know if I like the sound of that. I guess it really depends how they do it, but in theory they can create a distro that's dysfunctional without a couple of proprietary components of theirs, and then say "well, sure, you can download all the GPL'd stuff from our site - it just won't work."
It's more likely that they're refering to adding stuff like word perfect. In that case it's ok, redhat does the same, but redhat's commitment to GPL the stuff they write makes me a lot more comfortable.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
Turbo Linux (Japanese), through my sad personal experience.
I am not GPL zealot but I think they should be a little bit kind to GPL community since they are benefited from GPL in many ways.
If you down load their "#1 status" Japanese version of TL distribution from their ftp, you will be comfortably surprised how fast their ftp servers are. (Reality: very few even bother to download because cheap high speed connection is still rare thing for most Japanese thanks to its stupid government and monopoly telephone company.) Good start for me. But when installation starts, I was annoyed to find out their distribution has intentionally broken X-system.
Their excuse is True type fonts they use are commercial software and thus excluded from FTP version. Japanese use over 1000 character fonts. Creating new font system is not trivial. So this excuse may sound OK. But Debian already has free true type included so they do not resort to be like this blatant broken distribution just to get by GPL. It looks like they do this just to charge for the software (over $100 per copy), important of which they get free from GPL/BSD community. Another concern I have is that it is practically impossible to copy and share this distribution due to tangled copyright position of each software components. With good money made with expensive distribution without even an installation support in the old days, they could have donated Japanese free true type font.
Whatever the wording in GPL/BSD, spirit is community. Being a member of community, they can not take-take. It has to be give-and-take. If they want to combine commercial software to Linux distribution, I ask them to do it kindly and nicely. I think similar type of consideration must be made by Corel people. If any Linux distributor makes enhancement to core part of distribution, they have to give back to community. If these are not done, GPL community may have to resort to introduce new restrictive rules on distribution.
Last note: my personal experience of old TL 2.0 Pro was miserable. No installation support and priced over $100. True type font and simple word processor was the only significant commercial software bundled. I decided never to purchase CD from them.