Hello,
It's been a while since this came up and I'd forgotten that I'd written
that part about creating commercial distributions from S.L.
First off, the legal part.
Under the license of the GPL, you can create a commercial distribution
using SL.
But my one statement remains.
"When we make Scientific Linux we make sure everything in it is freely
distributable. There might be things in it that would make selling it
illegal. We just haven't checked."
For SL6, at this point, we haven't added anything that isn't GPL'ed, so
you should be ok there.
Second off, is it rude?
I don't feel as strongly about that as I used to. Others might. I
haven't asked.
Using SL6 to get things started until CentOS 6 gets released?
I have no problem with that at all.
I understand the reason. You need to get things started, setup and the
bugs worked out.
I would make sure that I switch all the packages from the one base
distro to the other (SL to CentOS). If you have some packages from one,
and some from the other, it might make your customers concerned or confused.
Troy
Douglas McClendon wrote:
> Hello, my name is Douglas McClendon. I recently discovered the rolling
> alpha of SL6 after discovering how comparatively closed the CentOS
> development is. I have a history of working with fedora, and
> contributing primarily to their livecd-tools and related anaconda stuff.
> I even have my own alternate livecd generation system, which as of the
> last couple of days now supports 6rolling. Thus I plan to release a
> rebranded installable live .iso image in the next day or two.
>
> In general my first presumption is to deal with SL as an upstream
> similarly to how I deal with fedora. I.e. brandstrip the same way SL
> brandstrips from its upstream. The question I have next, is whether you
> have the same attitude towards repo configs as fedora. Fedora has
> explicitly stated that they do not mind rebranded and remixed derivative
> distros shipping with repo configs pointing at their repositories.
> However after reading your FAQs and seeing the bit about you considering
> a commercial derivative to be 'rude' and 'possibly illegal' (like FUD
> much?), I figure its best to ask if you have a problem with that. If
> so, I can create my own quasi-mirror repo, but I'd rather stick with
> yours as I do with my fedora derivatives.
>
> Also, I would like to comment on that 'rude' bit. Given that SL is
> 'capitalizing' on the works of countless other individuals and
> corporations who play by the GPL rules, I find the 'rude' comment to be
> a bit 'rude' in itself. Myself, I've been unemployed for quite some
> time, and have code and contributions that perhaps some subset of the SL
> community are using to make their $$ jobs go more smoothly and
> efficiently. It seems only fair that in the extremely unlikely event
> that I could successfully commercialize a SL derived distro, that I
> should be allowed to feed myself. I really wish I didn't mean that as
> literally as I do.
>
> But no worries, it will certainly be no sweat to do my initial
> development against the available 6rolling, and then switch to CentOS
> for any commercial purposes - not because there is any legal requirement
> I think that I do so, but just to avoid being considered 'rude' by the
> SL community.
>
> In any event, I do very much appreciate your work, as well as the
> mountain of work which is its foundation. Thank you, and I hope that
> some of the experimental projects I'm working on will perhaps be of some
> help to your community in the coming days as well. (in the immediate
> future they will be non-commercial GPL offerings, but my goal is to
> commercially feed myself with my work somehow)
>
> Cheers,
>
> -dmc
> Douglas McClendon
--
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Troy Dawson [log in to unmask] (630)840-6468
Fermilab ComputingDivision/SCF/FEF/SLSMS Group
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